“The lady of the fifteen louis was blâmée and Beaumarchais was condemned also to blâme which seemed a contradiction. The magistrate, husband of the woman, was put out of
court which was equivalent to blâme for a magistrate, who thus remained incapable of filling any function of the magistracy.
“I was by his side with all the family when a friend came running, terrified to tell him this absurd judgment. He did not utter an angry word or make a gesture of indignation. Master of all his movements as of his mind, he said, ‘Let us see what there yet remains to be done.’”
Loménie says: “The penalty of blâme was an ignominious one which rendered the condemned incapable of occupying any public office, and he was supposed to receive the sentence on his knees before the court, while the president pronounced the words, ‘The court blames thee and declares thee infamous.’”
Gudin says, “This sentence had been so badly received by the multitude assembled at the doors of the chamber, the judges had been so hissed on breaking up the audience, although many of them took themselves out of the way by passing through the long corridors unknown to the public, which are called les détours du palais, they saw so many marks of discontentment that they were not tempted to execute to the letter the sentence which attracted to them only the blâme universel.”
Before speaking of the veritable triumph which the public accorded to Beaumarchais in return for this cruel sentence, let us finish with the parliament Maupeou.
“It was not destined,” says Loménie, “long to survive this act of anger and vengeance. In striking with civil death a man whom public opinion carried in triumph, it had struck its own death-blow. The opposition which had slept, now roused, let itself loose upon the parliament with redoubled fury. Pamphlets in prose and verse took on a new virility, the end of the reign assured its fall, and one of the first acts
of the new king, Louis XVI was to establish the old parliament.” Louis XV died in May, 1774, the old parliament was re-established in August of the same year.
“There were not lacking those,” says Bonnefon, “who called the destruction of the parliament Maupeou, the Saint-Bartholomew of the ministers.”
The Spanish ambassador, quick at repartee, added, “that in any case it was not the massacre of the Innocents.”