as the protector of the rights of the individual had caused to be rebuilt. The Prince was very angry. M. de Beaumarchais mounted on a horse and went to find him while the nobleman was out hunting.
“‘I have come,’ said Beaumarchais, ‘to give an account of my conduct.’
“A discussion at once arose; the Prince had a good deal of esprit and what is rarer still in one of his rank, he had liberal ideas.
“‘Certainly,’ Beaumarchais said to him, ‘your Highness can obtain anything you wish. Your rank, your power—’
“‘No,’ replied the Prince, ‘it is as lawyer that I pretend to be in the right.’
“‘In that case,’ said Beaumarchais, ‘I demand of your Highness leave to be the lawyer on the opposite side and to plead before you. You shall be the judge.’
“He then proceeded to expose the affair with so much clearness, precision, eloquence, energy, and regard for the Prince that the latter avowed he was in the wrong and from that moment felt for Beaumarchais the greatest affection.” And the devoted biographer hastens to add, “It was difficult to see him without loving him; the Dauphin, Mesdames, the Duke de la Vallière, the Duke de Chaulnes and nearly all those with whom he came in contact have experienced the same sentiment.”
During Beaumarchais’s sojourn in Spain the functions of this office, when not presided over by the Duke in person, were necessarily left to subordinates. Beaumarchais however retained his charge until a period just prior to its final abolishment in 1789.
When in the spring of 1765, Beaumarchais returned from Spain he found the court plunged in mourning, for the Dauphin was very near his end. Concerts for Mesdames
were not to be thought of, so very naturally he found himself drifting farther and farther from the social atmosphere of Court life. We soon shall see him employing his spare moments in literary work but before attempting to study Beaumarchais as an author, let us pause to contemplate him as the lover.