This is the little phalanx that Madame Goëzman, in her memoirs, calls a “clique infame” and which the grand Bertrand, less ferocious and more reasonable names simply, la bande joyeuse.
Figaro
They were in fact very joyful, all those spirituals bourgeois, grouped around Beaumarchais, combating with him a crowd of enemies, and not without running personal risk, because Julie notably was formally denounced by Goëzman. There was a printed petition of this judge directed especially against her, although it had no consequences. All of them, however, underwent interrogations, confrontations, and verifications, but they came out none the worse for it and their gaiety supported the courage and the ardor of the man to whom they were devoted heart and soul. Beaumarchais, forced to live en camp volant at the mercy of the sheriffs
of the Comte de la Blache and the persecutions of the judge Goëzman, was always on the wing but he came to the home of Madame Lépine near the Palais de Justice to prepare with his friends his means of defense and attack. It is in this house that the elements of each memoir were discussed. All the first draughts were written by the hand of Beaumarchais, all the brilliant portions are rewritten by him three or four times. Like all who wish to write well, he corrects and rewrites many times, he cuts out, amends, concentrates and purifies. If at times he allows himself to be too easily satisfied, he has friends prompt to censure him who do not spare him.
M. de Miron especially criticises in detail and with persistent candor. “Beaumarchais profited from all these aids, so that if his memoirs against Goëzman do not present from the nature of the subject all the interest of the ‘Barbier de Séville’ or the ‘Mariage de Figaro,’ they are none the less, so far as style is concerned, the most remarkable of all his works, the one where the good qualities of the author are the least mixed with faults. They contain portions of a really finished perfection.”
Monsieur de Loménie assures us further, that a certain passage, which is cited at times as being one of the most graceful of the memoirs, is due largely to Julie. He quotes at length the rough draughts of the passage in question as it appeared in its different stages, at first rather dry as written by Beaumarchais, then colored and animated by the brush of Julie, finally very skillfully retouched by her brother. It is where the plaideur replies to the attack of Madame Goëzman upon the ancestry and profession of his father. The printed text is as follows:
“You begin your chef-d’œuvre by reproaching me with the condition of my ancestors; alas madame, it is too true that
the last of all united to several branches of industry a considerable celebrity in the art of watchmaking. Forced to pass condemnation on that article I admit with sorrow that nothing can wash from me the just reproach which you make me of being the son of my father.... But I pause, because I feel him behind me, who, watching while I write, laughs while he embraces me. Oh you, who reproach me with my father, you have no idea of his generous heart. In truth, watchmaking aside, there is no one for whom I would exchange him; but I know too well the value of time which he taught me to measure to waste it by similar trifling.”
Supported as Beaumarchais was by the constant affection of those nearest to him the loss of his fortune and the dissolution of his household were the least of the calamities weighing upon him. He had known, as we have seen, how to gain the support of the nation at large, but he remained still completely at the mercy of the parliament which he had so hopelessly offended in daring to open up before the whole world those proceedings which it was never intended should be exposed to the light of day. It was of this period that La Harpe says, “Afterwards prosperity came of itself, it was during the combat and the oppression that his glory was gained.”