For our part let us hasten to add that we are very grateful to the Chevalier du S—— for carrying off Pauline. Charming as she was, she did not possess those sterling qualities which alone could have enabled her to be a real helpmeet to him in the terrible trials, which were preparing for him. Overwhelmed as we shall presently see him, a nature like hers would have been as a millstone about his neck, and he inevitably must have succumbed. As we shall see, the woman who eventually comes to share his life was of a very different mould. Misfortune and all the terrors of the Revolution only served to bring into more striking relief the vigor of a character already pronounced in its strength and womanliness.
Our gratitude to the Chevalier du S—— is no less great, in that by abstracting Pauline, he left to Beaumarchais the
truest support of his life, the woman who better than any one else understood the inmost recesses of his nature, and who at no moment of his career failed in giving him the affection, the encouragement, which he needed, and that served as the solid basis upon which he could build. In leaving to Beaumarchais the undisputed possession of his sister Julie, the Chevalier du S—— has won our undying gratitude, and so in all sincerity we say, requiescat in pace.
CHAPTER VI
“Je laisserai sans réponse tout ce qu’on a dit contre l’ouvrage, persuadé que le plus grand honneur qu’on ait pu lui faire, après celui de s’en amuser au théâtre, a été de ne pas le juger indigne de toute critique.”
Beaumarchais in “Essai sur le genre dramatique sérieux,” prefixed to the edition of “Eugénie.”
“Eugénie”—“Les deux Amis”—Second Marriage of Beaumarchais—The Forest of Chinon—Death of Madame de Beaumarchais.
THE immediate effect of Pauline’s desertion of Beaumarchais was to turn his thoughts from the gay world in which he was so brilliant and so striking a figure, to the more sober realms of literature. His talent as an author already had manifested itself by several farces and charades written for his colleague, M. Lenormant d’Étioles, the husband of Madame de Pompadour, at whose château d’Étioles they were produced.