And her fan assuaged by redoubled strokes the fire which had mounted to her face.... She was like a lioness feeling that she had just escaped being taken.
“After Madame Goëzman came Bertrand who began with this epigram taken from the Psalms ‘Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta, et ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.’”
Beaumarchais avenged himself on le grand Bertrand by indicting upon him the celebrity of ridicule. Here, as elsewhere, the shade of the physiognomies is perfectly grasped. It is in vain that Bertrand attempted to deal terrible blows, in vain that he committed to writing such phrases as, “cynic orator; buffoon; brazen-faced sophist; unfaithful painter who draws from his own soul the filth with which he tarnishes the robe of innocence; evil, from necessity and from taste; his heart hard, implacable, vindictive; light-headed from his passing triumph; and smothering without remorse human sensibility ...” instead of paying back anger for anger, Beaumarchais contented himself with painting his enemy. He painted him talkative, shrewd for gain, undecided, timid, hot-headed, but more stupid than bad, in a word exactly as he showed himself in the four grotesque memoirs with which he has enriched this famous suit.
The fourth champion who precipitated himself upon Beaumarchais, the head lowered to pierce him through by the first blow, was a novelist of the time, amusing enough in a melancholy way, who prided himself as he said, upon having l’embonpoint du sentiment. It is d’Arnaud-Baculard, who, to be agreeable to the judge Goëzman, wrote a letter containing a false statement and who, after being very politely set right in the first memoir of Beaumarchais, replied in this style:
“Yes, I was on foot and I encountered in the rue de
Condé, the sieur Caron en carrosse—dans son carrosse,” and as Beaumarchais had said that d’Arnaud had a somber air, he grew indignant and cried, “I had an air, not somber but penetrating. The somber air goes only with those who ruminate crime, who work to stifle remorse and to do evil—There are hearts in which I tremble to read, where I measure all the somber depths of hell. It is then that I cry out, ‘thou sleepest, Jupiter! for what purpose then hast thou thy thunderbolts?’”
“One sees,” said Loménie, “that if d’Arnaud on his side was not méchant, it was not from lack of will. The reply of Beaumarchais perhaps will be found interesting; there it will be seen with what justice he gave to each one his deserts, and what attractive serenity he brought into the combat. He began by reproducing the phrase of d’Arnaud about the carrosse.
“‘Dans son carrosse,’ you repeat with great point of admiration, who would not believe after that sad, ‘yes I was on foot’ and that great point of admiration which runs after my carrosse, that you were envy itself personified. But I, who know you to be a good man, I know that the phrase dans son carrosse, does not signify that you were sorry to see me in my carrosse, but only that you were sorry that I did not see you in yours.’
“‘But console yourself, Monsieur, the carrosse in which I rode was already no more mine when you saw me in it. The Comte de la Blache already had seized it with all my other goods. Men called à hautes armes, with uniforms, bandoliers and menacing guns guarded it, as well as all my furniture; and to cause you, in spite of myself, the sorrow of seeing me in my carrosse it was necessary that same day that I had that of demanding, my hat in one hand and a gros écu in the other, the permission to use it, of that company of
officers, which I did, ne vous déplaise, every morning, and while I speak with such tranquillity the same distress reigns in my household.