For fifteen years he pursued his object with unfaltering perseverance. Unable to establish a new order of things under the old régime, we shall find him in 1791 presenting a petition in regard to the rights of authors to the Assemblée Nationale.
But to return to the Barbier de Séville, let us anticipate a period of ten years and accompany Beaumarchais to a representation of this famous piece played upon another stage than that of the Théâtre-Français, and by actors very different from the comedians of the king.
It was in 1785. The aristocracy of France, all unconscious of what they were doing towards the undermining of the colossal structure of which they formed the parts, were bent upon one thing only and that was amusement.
From the insupportable régime which etiquette enforced,
Marie Antoinette fled the vast palace of Versailles on every possible occasion, seeking refuge in her charming and dearly loved retreat, the Petit-Trianon.
Le Petit-Trianon
In the semi-seclusion of her palace and its adjoining pleasure grounds, her rôle of queen was forgotten. It was there that she amused herself with her ladies of honor, in playing at being shepherdess, or dairy maid. Whatever ingenuity could devise to heighten the illusion, was there produced. Innocent and harmless sports one might say, and in itself that was true, but for a Queen of France! A queen claiming still all the advantages of her rank, renouncing only what was burdensome and dull! Innocent she was, of all the crimes that calumnies imputed to her, and of what crimes did they not try to make her appear guilty; but innocent in the light of history she was not. More than any other victim perhaps of the French Revolution, she brought her doom upon herself. The sublimity, however, with which she expiated to the uttermost those thoughtless follies of her youth, enables us to pardon her as woman, though as queen, we must recognize that her fate was inevitable.
But in 1785, mirth and gaiety still reigned in the precinct of the Petit-Trianon. In August of the year Marie Antoinette who had always protected Beaumarchais, wishing to do him a signal honor had decided to produce upon the little stage of her palace theater the Barbier de Séville.
In his Fin de l’ancien Régime, Imbert de Saint-Amand gives the following narration of that strange incident.