“I beg you to accept my excuses, and my sincere regrets. I take very little account of quarrels where amour-propre alone is concerned, but I never forget real offenses.
“I have the honor to be ... etc.
“La Harpe.”
“It was necessary to get on without La Harpe,” says Loménie, “at least for this first meeting, because I see by another note of his that at the next meeting, where Beaumarchais no doubt sacrificed to the irascible academician on that day Dorat and Sauvigny, for he accepted the invitation for dinner and wrote in a more joyful tone.
“‘Your invitation leading me to suppose that the obstacles which kept me away no longer exist, I willingly consent to join you towards five o’clock. It is not that I renounce the pleasure of finding myself, glass in hand, with a man as amiable as you, Monsieur, but you are of too good company not to have supper and I admit that it is my favorite repast; thus I say with Horace, “Arcesse vel imperium fer.”
“‘I have the honor to be—etc.
La Harpe.’”
On the third of July, 1777, twenty-three dramatic authors found themselves gathered together around the table of Beaumarchais. If several had absented themselves from personal jealousies, others had stayed away through indifference. Collé, homme spirituel and author famous in his time, replied in a letter flattering to Beaumarchais but refusing all participation in the work of the society. Absent at that time from Paris, he wrote, “I avow, Monsieur, with my ordinary frankness that even had I been in Paris I should not have had the honor of finding myself at your assembly of MM. the dramatic authors. I am old and disgusted to the point of nausea with that troupe royale. For three years I have seen neither comédiens nor comédiennes.
De tous ces gens-là
J’en ai jusque-là.