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 cafés and foyers of the theaters they were read out loud to enthusiastically admiring crowds.
Title Page of the Mémoires de Mr 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.