Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence Volume I Part 17

CHAPTER X

_?Mais que dira-t-on quand on apprendra que ce Beaumarchais, qui jusqu??

pr?sent n?est connu que par son inalt?rable ga?t?, son imperturbable philosophie, qui compose ? la fois un air gracieux, un malin vaudeville, une com?die folle, un drame touchant, brave les puissants, rit des sots et s?amuse aux d?pens de tout le monde??_

_Marsolier--?Beaumarchais ? Madrid,? Act IV, Scene V_

The Go?zman Lawsuit--The Famous Memoirs of Beaumarchais.

We have come at last to the turn of the tide in the career of Beaumarchais, which in his case is no ordinary tide but a tidal wave so gigantic in force that he is carried by it to such a height of popularity as fixes upon him for the time the attention of Europe.

?The degree of talent which he displayed,? says La Harpe, ?belongs to the situation. It came from his perfect accord with the time in which he lived and the circ.u.mstances in which he found himself. The secret of all great success lies in the power of the man to see with a comprehensive glance what he can do with himself and with others.?

Already we have had occasion to note that in this harmony between Beaumarchais and the circ.u.mstances of his life lies the secret of his genius. He is no moralizer, but he sees things clearly and in just proportion and he knows how to take advantage of his own position as well as of the weakness of his adversaries.

In relation to the lawsuit of which we now write, La Harpe further says, ?What would have disconcerted or rendered furious an ordinary person did not move the spirit of Beaumarchais. Master of his own indignation and strong with that of the public, he called upon it to witness the fraud which has been employed against him.? At first many cry out that it is ridiculous to make such a fuss about fifteen louis; his family, his friends, Gudin among the number, implore him to desist; wiser than they, he instinctively feels that in the very pettiness, the absurdity of the charge, lies its gigantic force.

Again quoting La Harpe, ?It was a master stroke, this suit about the fifteen louis; and what joy for the public, which in reading Beaumarchais saw in his different memoirs which rapidly succeeded one another, only the hand which took upon itself to revenge the people?s wrongs. The facts did not speak, they cried!?

When Beaumarchais found himself actually charged with a criminal accusation capable of sending him to the public infamy of the pillory or the galleys, unable to find a lawyer willing to plead his cause, it was then that the whole power of his genius was revealed to him. Instantly he realized that he was to be his own lawyer, and that from the magistracy before him, it was to the people that he must appeal, ?that judge of judges,? and we see him flinging forth one factum after another, while all the force of his soul, the gaiety of his character, the brilliancy of his wit, returned to him in overabundant measure. The family and friends, lately so depressed, rose with the rising of his courage, lent to him the whole force of their beings and formed the constant inspiration of his ever-increasing success.

In a few weeks his first memoir had attracted the attention of all France, while in less than three days after the publication of the fourth, more than six thousand copies had been sold. At the ball or the opera, people tore them from one another?s hands, and in the caf?s and foyers of the theaters they were read out loud to enthusiastically admiring crowds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tle Page of the M?moires de M^r Caron de Beaumarchais]

What could be more surprising? Judicial factums or memoirs universally recognized as being the dryest and most uninteresting of writings come to be preferred to all others?

It was, as Voltaire said, after reading the fourth memoir, ?No comedy was ever more amusing, no tragedy more touching,? and Lintilhac taking up this judgment and applying it to the memoirs has made perhaps the most brilliant of the many criticisms which this subject has called forth.

?The judgment of Voltaire,? he says, ?reveals to us the most original of their merits, that of being a tragi-comedy in five acts. The unity of the subject is placed in evidence by this question which is so often raised.

Who is culpable of the crime of corruption--the judge whose surroundings put his justice at auction, or the litigant thus constrained to scatter gold about the judge?

?The five memoirs mark the phases of the debate. The first is a perfect exposition of the subject destined to soothe the judges. After having made a r?sum? of the preceding incidents, and taken his position, Beaumarchais engages the offensive and orders his intrigue by light skirmishes in the form of episodes. Then he opens a dramatic perspective upon the sudden changes of the contest.

?From the first to the second memoir during the _entre-act_ the action has advanced. A rain of ridiculous and arrogant factums, of false testimonies and infamous calumnies has poured down upon the victim of the piece. The black intrigue is knotted, the scenes press varied and picturesque. At first it is that of the registrar, then Madame Go?zman comes before us with insults but ends with artful pretty faces. After this comic prelude, the two princ.i.p.al characters engage in the background, in a dramatic contest.

??Give me your hand,? cries Beaumarchais, and illuminating the scene, he ousts his crafty adversary, seizes him, drags him frightened like a thief in the night to the nearest lamp post, that is to say, the crude illumination of the foot lights, crying in his face the invective: ?And you are a magistrate! To what have we come, great heavens!?

?Similar to the third act of a strongly intrigued play, the third memoir throws the adversaries on the scene and engages them in a furious fray. We have just seen the judge imprudent enough to descend from the tribunal to the arena, he lies there panting under the grip of his adversary, it is then that fly to his aid ?that swarm of hornets.? The image is piquant, the scene, does it not renew the _parabase des Gu?pes_? ?Six memoirs at once against me!? cries the valiant athlete in an outburst of manly gaiety. He takes up the glove, salutes them all around with an ironic politeness, and then sends all of them, Marin, Bertrand, Arnaud, Baculard, even to Falcoz, who in vain tries to turn in a whirligig upon an absurdity, to bite the dust by the side of Go?zman. It is the moment to bring up the reserves. They arrive in serried ranks. Here comes a president and a whole host of counsellors. ?My, what a world of people occupied to support you, Monsieur!?

?A daring offensive alone can disengage Beaumarchais. He instantly makes it, and following his favorite tactics, he wears it as an ornament, an accusation of forgery well directed against Go?zman changes the r?les; this is the grand counter movement of the piece.

?A sudden stupor has broken up the allies, their adversary knows how to profit by their confusion, and throws out his pet.i.tion of mitigation. It is the fourth act. He prepares briefly and wisely the fifth. Beaumarchais with an affected and deadly moderation, sums up the facts, fortifies himself in the conquered position and prepares the supreme a.s.sault.

?At last in the fourth memoir he gives out the fifth act of the peace.

?Without ceding in the least to the third memoir in point of composition, the fourth in spite of an occasional ?abuse of force,? according to La Harpe, surpa.s.ses it by its heat and brilliancy.

?There reigns above everything else an ease that Beaumarchais announces from the beginning. ?This memoir,? he says, ?is less an examination of a dry and bloodless question, than a succession of reflections upon my estate as accused.?

?It is the best of his dramas, a _m?lange_ of mirth and pathos, where are centered and dissolved with an authoritative cleverness, all the elements of interest and of action which he draws from the heart of his subject and which are multiplied by his fancy and his fears. In the beginning, an invocation, the prelude of a _h?ro?que-comique_ drama, then thanking a host of honest people who applaud and whose aid he skilfully declines, the hero springs with one bound into the fray.

?He directs his finis.h.i.+ng blows to each one of his adversaries, and making a trophy of their calumnies, he awards himself an eloquent apology which he modestly ent.i.tles, ?Fragments of my voyage in Spain.? The episode of Clavico, thanks to the touching interest which it excites, crowns the memoir like the recitals which unravel the plot in cla.s.sic plays, and whose discreet eloquence leads the soul of the auditor to a sort of final appeas.e.m.e.nt.

?If the action is dramatic, the characters are no less so. First Madame Go?zman advances, a scowl upon her face, but at a gracefully turned compliment from her adversary, ?at once a sweet smile gives back to her mouth its agreeable form.??

And so with the rest. ?But the most vivid of all his portraits is that of the princ.i.p.al personage, the author himself, this propagandist always _en sc?ne_, who is never weary, whom one sees or whom one divines everywhere, animating everything with his presence, the center of all action and interest. He is endowed with such a beautiful sang-froid, which acts under all circ.u.mstances, and such vivid sensibility that everything paints itself in his memory, everything fixes itself under his pen. So that he appears to us in the most various att.i.tudes; here the soul of gallantry, advancing to offer his hand to Madame Go?zman; there of modesty lowering his eyes for her, or again, hat in hand very humbly inclining before the pa.s.sage of some mettlesome president.?

But as Gudin a.s.sures us, ?The courage of Beaumarchais was not insensibility. The tone of his memoirs showed his superiority but he was none the less deeply affected. I have seen him shed tears, but I have never seen him cast down. His tears seemed like the dew which revivifies.

The hour of combat gave him back his courage. He advanced, dauntless, against his enemies; he felled them to the ground and caused to react upon them the outrages with which they attacked him. In their despair they published that he was not the author of his memoirs. ?We know,? they cried, ?where they are composed and who composes them.?

?It was this accusation which gave to Beaumarchais the opportunity for one of his wittiest retorts. ?Stupid people, why don?t you get your own written there???

Gudin was even accused of writing them,--faithful Gudin, whose history of France in thirty-five volumes never found a publisher, and ?whose prose,?

says Lom?nie, ?resembled that of Beaumarchais about as the gait of a laboring ox resembles that of a light and spirited horse.?

Rousseau when he heard the accusation cried out, ?I do not know whether Beaumarchais writes them or not, but I know this, no one writes such memoirs for another.?

Voltaire in the depths of his retreat read the memoirs with eager interest. Personal reasons had made him in the beginning a supporter of the parliament Maupeou. Little by little, he changed his opinion; ?I am afraid,? he wrote, ?that after all that brilliant, hare-brained fellow is in the right against the whole world.? And a little later, ?What a man! He unites everything; jesting, gravity, gaiety, pathos,--every species of eloquence without seeking after any; he confounds his adversaries; he gives lessons to his judges. His _na?vet?_ enchants me.?

As to the most atrocious calumnies circulated against him, La Harpe who knew him well, although never intimately, has said: ?I have not forgotten how many times I heard repeated by persons who did not believe in the least that they were doing wrong, that a certain M. de Beaumarchais who was much talked about had enriched himself by getting rid successively of two wives who had fortunes. Surely this is enough to make one shudder, if one stops to reflect that this is what is called scandal (something scarcely thought sinful) and that there was not the slightest ground for such a horrible defamation. He had, it is true, married two widows with fortunes, which is surely very permissible for a young man with none. He received nothing from the one, because in his grief he forgot to register the contract of marriage duly, and this alone which rendered the crime useless was sufficient to prove his innocence.

?He inherited something from the second who was a very charming woman, whom he adored. She left him a son, whom he lost soon after his wife?s death. I do not know why no one ever accused him of poisoning the child, that crime was necessary to complete the other. It is evident, even if he had not loved his wife, that in keeping her alive he had everything to gain, as her fortune was in the main hers only during life.

?These are public facts of which I am sure, but hatred does not look for the truth, and it knows that it will not be required of it by the thoughtless. Where are we, great Heavens, if a man cannot have the misfortune to inherit from his wife without having poisoned her?...?

When Voltaire, who had heard the calumny, read the memoirs of Beaumarchais, he said, ?This man is not a poisoner, he is too gay.?

La Harpe adds, ?Voltaire could not know as I do, that he was also too good, too sensible, too open, too benevolent to commit any bad act, although he knew very well how to write very amusing and very malicious things against those who blackened him.?

Compelled to defend himself and to prove himself innocent of a crime so horrible that its name could scarcely be forced to pa.s.s his lips, he replies with a gentleness, but a power of eloquence which confounds his adversaries. ?Cowardly enemies, have you then no resource but base insult?

Calumny machinated in secret and struck out in the darkness? Show yourselves then, but once, if for nothing more than to tell me to my face that it is out of place for any man to defend himself. But all honest people know very well that your fury has placed me in an absolutely privileged cla.s.s. They will excuse me for taking this occasion to confound you, where forced to defend a moment of my life I am about to spread a luminous daylight over the rest. Dare then to contradict me. Here is my life in a few words.

?For the last fifteen years I honor myself with being the father and the sole support of a numerous family, and far from being offended at this avowal which is torn from me, my relatives take pleasure in publis.h.i.+ng that I have always shared my modest fortune with them without ostentation and without reproach.

?O you who calumniate me without knowing me, come and hear the concert of benedictions which fall upon me from a crowd of good hearts and you will go away undeceived.

?As to my wives, from having neglected to register the contract of marriage, the death of the first left me dest.i.tute in the rigor of the term, overwhelmed with debts and with pretentions which I was unwilling to follow, not wis.h.i.+ng to go to law with the relatives, of whom, up to that moment, I had no reason to complain. My second wife in dying carried with her more than three-fourths of her fortune, so that my son, had he lived, would have found himself richer from the side of his father than that of his mother....

?And you who have known me, you who have followed me without ceasing, O my friends, say, have you ever known in me anything but a man constantly gay, loving with an equal pa.s.sion study and pleasure, inclined to raillery but without bitterness, welcoming it against himself when it was well seasoned, supporting perhaps with too much ardor his own opinion when he believed it to be just, but honoring highly and without envy everyone whom he recognized as superior, confident about his interests to the point of neglecting them, active when he is goaded, indolent and stagnant after the tempest, careless in happiness but carrying constancy and serenity into misfortune to the point of astonis.h.i.+ng his most intimate friends....

?How is it that, with a life and intentions the most honorable, a citizen sees himself so violently torn to pieces? That a man so gay and sociable away from home, so solid and benevolent in his family, should find himself the b.u.t.t of a thousand venomous calumnies? This is the problem of my life.

I search in vain for its solution.?

It was by such outbursts of feeling that Beaumarchais won the hearts of all except those who for personal reasons were bent upon his ruin. But as the admiration of the one side increased, the fury of the other was proportionally augmented. Under the able guidance of M. de Lom?nie, let us examine a few of the adversaries who presented themselves, and from the few, the reader may judge of the rest.

First of all is Madame Go?zman, ?who,? says Lom?nie, ?wrote under the dictates of her husband and threw at the head of Beaumarchais a quarto of seventy-four pages, bristling with terms of law and Latin quotations.