Finally the capital fault of the play is very well drawn up in the quatrain of the time,
“I have seen Beaumarchais’s ridiculous drama,
And in a single word I will say what it is;
It is an exchange where money circulates,
Without producing any interest.”
Lintilhac remarks, “He gave in this crisis a double proof of his genius; in the first place, he allowed his piece to fall without comment, and in the second he did not despair of his dramatic vocation.”
Already Beaumarchais was meditating his Barbier de Séville but in the meantime he was seriously occupied with a new and extensive business transaction. The fortune of his wife had enabled him to enter into a partnership with old Du Verney in the acquisition of the vast forest of Chinon, which they bought from the government. A letter to his wife, dated July 15, 1769, shows him at his work.
“De Rivarennes.
“You invite me to write, my good friend, and I wish to with all my heart, it is an agreeable relaxation from the fatigues of my stay in this village. Misunderstandings among the heads of departments to be reconciled, complaints, and demands of clerks to be listened to, an account of more than 100,000 écus, in sums of from 20 to 30 sous to regulate, and of which it was necessary to discharge the regular cashier, the different posts to be visited, two hundred workmen of the forest whose work must be examined, two hundred and eighty acres of wood cut down whose preparation and transportation must be looked after, new roads to be constructed into the forest and to the river, the old roads to be mended, three or four hundred tons of hay to be stacked, provisions of oats for thirty dray horses to be arranged for, thirty other horses to be brought for the transport of all the wood for the navy before winter, gates and sluices to be constructed in the river Indre in order to give us water all the year at the place where the wood is discharged, fifty vessels which wait to be loaded for Tours, Saumur, Angers and Nantes, the leases of seven or eight
farms to sign, beside the provision for housing thirty persons; the general inventory of our receipts and expenses for the last two years to regulate, voilà, my dear wife, briefly the sum of my occupations of which part is terminated and the rest en bon train.”
After two more pages of details Beaumarchais terminates his letter thus: “You see, my dear friend, that one sleeps less here than at Pantin, but the forced activity of this work does not displease me, since I have arrived in this retreat inaccessible to vanity, I have seen only simple people with unpretentious manners, such as I often desire myself to be. I lodge in my office which is a good peasant farm, between barnyard and kitchen garden, surrounded with a green hedge. My room with its four white-washed walls has for furniture an uncomfortable bed where I sleep like a top, four rush-bottomed chairs, an oaken table and a great fireplace without ornament or shelf; but I see from my window on writing you, the whole of the Varennes or prairies of the valley which I inhabit, full of robust, sunburned men who cut and cart hay with yokes of oxen, a multitude of women and girls each with a rake on the shoulder or in the hand, all singing songs whose shrill notes reach me as I write. Across the trees in the distance I see the tortuous course of the Indre and an ancient castle flanked by towers which belongs to my neighbor Madame de Roncée. The whole is crowned with wooded summits which multiply as far as the eye can see, the highest crests of which surround us on all sides in such a manner that they form a great spherical frame to the horizon, which they bound on every side. This picture is not without charm. Good coarse bread, the most modest nourishment with execrable wine composes my repasts. In truth, if I dared wish you the evil of lacking everything in a desolate country I should deeply regret not having you by my side.
Adieu, my friend. If you think that these details might interest our relatives and friends you are free to read my letters to them. Embrace them all for me and good night—it seems hard to me sometimes not to have you near—and my son, my son! how is he? I laugh when I think that it is for him that I work.”