“The dissenting princes demanded to be taken back into favor, the dispossessed magistrates of the dissolved parliaments consented to the liquidation of the charges against them, the pamphlets diminished, and things came back to their ordinary course. Maupeou held himself assured of triumph and vaunted that he had saved the crown from the registrar.
“But he had deceived himself. When any large part of a nation, honest and intelligent, feels itself wounded in its dignity, though the wound may close in appearance, it does not heal; that which was in the beginning a flame became a smouldering fire, which hidden under the ashes of an apparent non-resistance was in reality but waiting an opportunity to break forth into a devouring element.
“It was reserved for Beaumarchais to fan this into a flame with a suit for fifteen louis, and to destroy both Maupeou and his parliament.”
Madame du Barry
It was then to this parliament and Maupeou that the
Comte de la Blache made his appeal. The institution was the more to his liking, since at its head presided a certain counsellor by the name of Goëzman who seemed especially made for his purpose.
We shall have much to say of this same Goëzman in a succeeding chapter when it comes to the question of the famous lawsuit concerning the fifteen louis. At this time, however, Beaumarchais’s case was very strong and none of his friends seriously supposed that the count would be able to turn the suit against him.
It was at this crisis that a circumstance, one of the most bizarre of all the strange happenings in the life of Beaumarchais, suddenly placed him at the mercy of his bitterest enemy.
For a minutely detailed account of this incident we have Beaumarchais’s own account as rendered to the lieutenant of police after the matter had been taken up by the authorities. While Gudin on his side, who, as we shall see, had his own part to play in this singular drama, gives a no less circumstantial account of the whole proceeding.