perfidious. I said once more this morning to Mademoiselle your sister, that a demoiselle who used to live with my aunt was the cause of what happens to-day. You have still several of my letters which I ask you to return. I will beg one of our friends to arrange with you about everything which remains to be adjusted. I am, very perfectly, Monsieur, your very humble and obedient servant,
L. B——.’”
Still quoting Loménie: “Pauline who used to sign herself, ‘I am for life thy faithful Pauline’ now signs politely her family name, and so this correspondence ends like so many others of the same nature, by, ‘I have the honor to be,’ or ‘I am very perfectly’ which succeed the protestations of an eternal love.”
And now follows a second letter from the cousin in relation to this unhappy affair, “All is said, my dear Beaumarchais, and without hope of return. I have notified Madame G. (the aunt of Pauline) and Mlle. Le B—— of your dispositions, they ask nothing better than to come to an honorable arrangement in this rupture. It remains now to regulate the account between Mlle. Le B—— and you, and to take measures to secure for you the sum which is due. These ladies beg you to give back all the papers which you have concerning the affairs of Mlle. Le B——. You cannot tell how unhappy I am not to have been able to unite two hearts which for so long have seemed to me made for each other, but man proposes and God disposes. I flatter myself that on both sides the justice which I feel belongs to me, will be rendered. I have let you read in my heart, and you must have seen that I know neither disguisement nor artifice. Adieu, my friend, I will go to see you as soon as I can;
in the meantime write to me. I embrace you, I am as always,
“Your sincere friend P——
“February 11th, 1766—”
In the words of Loménie, “Let us accord this worthy cousin, whose sentences are more consoling than new, the justice which he claims, and acknowledge that he is a stranger to the perfidy of the Chevalier. If we were writing a romance we would stop here, or else end with the death of Beaumarchais, he killing himself in despair, or by the death of the Chevalier, immolated by the fury of his rival; but as we are writing a history we are obliged above all else to be exact and instead of stating that the adventure ends by a suicide or a duel we are forced to state that it terminates much more prosaically, by a règlement de comptes where the future author of the Mariage de Figaro makes an amusing enough figure in his rôle of betrayed lover and uneasy creditor.”
There is, we must admit, an indefinable humor in the idea of the brilliant genius Beaumarchais, deserted by his Pauline, seating himself, le coeur gros, the tears of anger and mortification welling to his eyes, intent upon regulating, with the same minute exactitude that he showed in making the watch to be set as a jewel in a lady’s ring, the account existing between him and Pauline.
As a matter of fact, he had been far less prudent in his generous advances of money than in the expression of his sentiments as a lover, for not only had he risked large sums on the Santo Domingo property, but he had been in the habit of advancing money both to Pauline and to her aunt without keeping any special count. To return to the account of Loménie, “He groups the capital with the interest and presents a bill of the most scrupulous rectitude. The Chevalier,
who has no time to bother with such vile details, and who has gone to pass his honeymoon I don’t know where, sends to Beaumarchais his older brother, the abbé du S——, respectable, but a little quick tempered, who not only quibbles over the bill, but permits himself sometimes to deepen a bleeding wound by opposing the lover to the creditor. From that come stormy discussions, of which the following letter of Beaumarchais to the abbé will serve as illustration.