society. This one will love me as a son, that one as a friend and my Pauline, uniting all these sentiments in her good little heart, will inundate me with a deluge of affection, to which I will reply following the power given by Providence to your zealous servitor, your sincere friend, your future.... Peste! what a serious word I was going to pronounce! It would have passed the limits of the profound respect with which I have the honor to be, Mademoiselle, etc., etc.”
Matters were at this pass when Beaumarchais left Paris for Madrid. Soon after his arrival there, news of an alarming nature began to reach France from Santo Domingo. The uncle had met with an unscrupulous relative of Pauline and very soon money and merchandise were lost, and as a crowning misfortune the uncle suddenly died.
The elder Caron, in writing to his son, seems to have intimated a suspicion of foul play, for the son replies from Madrid, after quoting a line from his father’s letter, “What do you mean by that? If it is simply that our funds are lost that is a misfortune no doubt, but truly the other thought is far worse. My heart aches to think of my poor uncle who, having a presentiment of misfortune and death, went to meet his fate with so much good grace; but do not believe that anyone has hastened his end, for we have no proof and the suspicion is the most odious that can enter into the mind of man; the climate alone, even where there are no worries or enfeeblement, carries off two-thirds of the men and it is certainly sufficient calamity for us to feel that we have sent him to a natural death, without gnawing our hearts out by the dreadful idea that we sent him there to be a victim.
“My sisters at Madrid know nothing of my real sorrow. I could have wished that you yourself might have been spared the knowledge of it.”
That Beaumarchais conceived the idea of himself going to the West Indies, is proved by a passage in one of his letters to his father in which he speaks of his design to sell his appointment at court and go with Pauline to settle in Santo Domingo.
Through some of the letters of the elder Caron we have a picture of the delightful home life of the family and the gaiety of the sisters of this brilliant brother. On the 22nd of January, the father writes, “Nothing more beautiful than the festival at Beaufort could be imagined. Boisgarnier and Pauline shone with their usual brilliancy. They danced until two, after the concert and the supper; there was nothing wanting but our Beaumarchais.”
Julie also wrote to a friend. “We played comedies and we made love, there was a company of forty-five persons and your Julie pleased generally in all her rôles. Everyone declared her one of the best actresses. What I say here is not to praise her, because every one knows how modest she is; it is only because of your weakness, and to justify your choice in having made her your friend. We are preparing another more agreeable festival for the return of my brother.”
Of Julie’s manner of love-making we shall permit her to tell us, a little later, in her own way. For the moment, let it suffice to state the fact, that a certain Chevalier du S——, a gifted young man with no fortune, but with a name and a position of honor, had been for some time very assiduous in his attention to the favorite sister of Beaumarchais. He had been well received by the family and had asked her hand in marriage. He was also a native of Santo Domingo, though in no way connected with Pauline, whom he met for the first time at the home of his friends, in rue de Condé.
It does not concern us in the study which we are making
to enter very deeply into the merits of this young man since in the end he does not ally himself with the family; we shall, however, be forced to speak of him later, as it is he who turns out to be the other Clavico, who deserts Julie and carries off Pauline. In how far these two are justified for their double desertion, the reader may judge if he has the patience to follow the story to its completion. For the present, let us turn our attention to another pair of lovers, less romantic, perhaps, at least so far as the hero is concerned,—but possessed of more sterling qualities.