CHAPTER IV
“Figure charmante, organe flexible et touchant! de l’âme surtout....”
“Les deux amis,” Act 1, Scene 1.
The Beautiful Creole, Pauline—Beaumarchais the Judge, the Lover, the Friend—Mademoiselle de Boisgarnier Marries Janot de Miron—The Père Caron’s Second Marriage.
BEFORE entering into a consideration of the rôle played by Beaumarchais as lover, a few more touches are necessary to represent him as he was before the world. We already have spoken of his various appointments at court, and mentioned the fact that in 1763 he had bought the very honorable charge of lieutenant-général des chasses aux bailliage et capitainerie de la varenne du Louvre.
In order that it may be quite clear to the reader what were the functions assumed in acquiring this office we may explain that the capitaineries were territorial circumscriptions in which the right of hunting was reserved exclusively for the king. That known as “la varenne du Louvre” extended for some fifty or sixty miles about Paris. There was a special tribunal called “the tribunal to conserve the pleasures of the king” which tried all cases connected with infringements of the regulations belonging to the capitaineries. The audiences of the particular one in question were held once a week at the Louvre. They were presided over by the duke de la Vallière, whose chief officer Beaumarchais now became.
When the duke was absent, which M. de Loménie assures us was almost invariably the case, Beaumarchais himself presided. Under the latter were many subordinates, some of them noblemen of high rank, so that it is easy to understand the prestige of such an office.
There were innumerable regulations, many of them very trying to private individuals, which it became the duty of the lieutenant-general to enforce. In the territory belonging to the capitainerie, no game could be shot, no garden or other wall be constructed without special authorization from the tribunal which presided over these matters. So annoying were these regulations that in 1789 the suppression of the capitaineries was one of the most popular measures voted by the Assemblée Constituante. In 1763, however, no one had thought as yet of the possibility of doing without them, so that we shall see Beaumarchais entering with his usual ardor into the exact and circumspect performance of his new duties.
To think of Beaumarchais as he appears later in life, attacking with the audacity which belongs to him alone, the very foundations of feudal despotism in his inimitable Mariage de Figaro, and to see him now in his long judicial robes seated upon the fleur de lis, gravely judging “pale humans” apropos of rabbits, is a contrast which hardly can be met with in any other career, and certainly not in any other century. That he took his functions seriously and that he also knew how to guard such rights as individuals then possessed is clearly shown in the following characteristic anecdote which we quote from Gudin.
“Soon after his return from Spain, Beaumarchais had a quarrel with the Prince of Condé, on the subject of the privileges of the chase, in connection with a certain garden wall which the Prince had torn down and which Beaumarchais