“‘I have only what I merit,’ he said. ‘I have provoked
an honest man who never gave me any offense, to please people whom I do not esteem.’
“His relatives and friends were not able to draw any other reply from him during the eight days which he lived. He carried the secret to the tomb, leaving to Beaumarchais the regret of having taken the life of a man who proved so generous an enemy.
“‘Ah, young man,’ Beaumarchais said to me one day when I was joking over some duel which was then much talked about, ‘you do not know what despair a man feels when he sees the hilt of his sword upon his enemy’s breast!’ It was then that he related to me this adventure which was still afflicting him, although many years had elapsed since it had taken place. He never spoke of it without grief, and I should probably never have heard of it, if he had not thought it right to make me feel how dangerous it might be to joke about such fatal affairs, the number of which is increased much more by frivolity than by bravery.”
It may be well to add, in relation to the death of the Chevalier du C—— that the protection of Mesdames, who personally interceded with the King, prevented an investigation being made so that Beaumarchais was secure.
But while he was still holding his own in the envious crowd of courtiers at Versailles, his position was in reality far from desirable. Monsieur de Loménie says: “Having no other resource than the small income from his charge of contrôleur, not only was he obliged to put his time gratuitously at the disposal of the Princesses, without speaking of the cost of keeping up appearances, but he even at times found himself under the necessity of proceeding like a great lord, and of making advances for the purchase of costly instruments which they scarcely thought of promptly paying back. Very desirous of enriching himself, he was too clever
to compromise his credit by receiving pecuniary recompense, which would have put him in the rank of a mercenary; he preferred to wait for some favorable occasion, when he might obtain a real advantage from his position, reserving the right to say later: ‘I have passed four years in meriting the good graces of Mesdames by the most assiduous and most disinterested pains bestowed upon divers objects of their amusements.’
“But Mesdames, like all other women and especially princesses, had sufficiently varied fancies which it was necessary to satisfy immediately. In the correspondence of Mme. du Deffant is the very amusing story of a box of candied quinces of Orleans, so impatiently demanded by Madame Victoire that the King, her father, sent in haste to the minister, M. de Choiseul, who sent to the Bishop of Orleans, who was awakened at three o’clock in the morning to give him, to his great affright, a missive from the King, running as follows:
“‘Monsieur the bishop of Orleans, my daughters wish some cotignac; they wish the very small boxes; send some. If you have none, I beg you ... [in this place in the letter there was a drawing of a Sedan chair, and below] to send immediately into your episcopal city and get some, and be sure that they are the very small boxes; upon which, Monsieur the bishop of Orleans, may God have you in His holy keeping. Louis.’ Below in postscriptum is written: ‘The sedan chair, means nothing, it was designed by my girls upon the paper which I found at hand.’ A courier was immediately dispatched for Orleans. ‘The cotignac,’ says Madame du Deffant, ‘arrived the next day, but no one thought anything more of it.’
“It often happened that Beaumarchais received missives that recalled somewhat the history of the cotignac, with this