CHAPTER IX
“La Jeunesse—Mais quand une chose est vraie.... Bartholo—Quand une chose est vraie! si je ne veux pas qu’elle soit vraie, je prétends qu’elle ne soit pas vraie. Il n’y aurait qu’a permettre à tous ces faquins-là d’avoir raison, vous verrez bientôt ce que deviendrait l’autorité.”
“Le Barbier de Séville,” Act II, Scene VII.
Beaumarchais at For-l’Evêque—Letter to his Little Friend—Second Trial in the Suit Instituted Against Him by the Count de la Blache—Efforts to Secure an Audience with the Reporter Goëzman—Second Judgment Rendered Against Beaumarchais—He Obtains his Liberty—Loudly Demands the Return of his Fifteen Louis.
ALTHOUGH Beaumarchais’s first letter from For-l’Evêque sounded philosophical, his situation was cruel in the extreme. Loménie says: “This imprisonment which fell in the midst of his suit against the Comte de la Blache did him frightful harm; his adversary profiting by the circumstance, worked without relaxation to blacken his character before the judges, multiplying his measures, his recommendations, his solicitations; and ardently pressing the decision of his suit, while the unhappy prisoner whose fortune and honor were engaged in this affair, could not even obtain permission to go out for a few hours to visit the judges in his turn.
“M. de Sartine showed him the greatest good-will but
he was unable to do more than mitigate his situation, his liberty depending on the minister.
“Beaumarchais had begun by pleading his cause before the Duke de la Vrillière, as a citizen unjustly imprisoned. He sent him memoir after memoir proving ably that he had done no wrong; he demanded to know why he had been detained, and when M. de Sartine warned him in a friendly way that this tone would lead to nothing, he replied with dignity, ‘The only satisfaction of a persecuted man is to render testimony that he is unjustly dealt with.’”
While he was consuming himself in vain protestations, the day for the judgment of his suit approached. To the demands of M. de Sartine soliciting permission for Beaumarchais to go out for a few hours each day the duc de la Vrillière replied always, “That man is too insolent, let him follow his affair through his attorney!” and Beaumarchais, indignant and heart-broken, wrote to M. de Sartine:
“It is completely proved to me that they desire that I shall lose my suit, if it is possible for me to lose it, but I admit that I was not prepared for the derisive answer of the duc de la Vrillière to solicit my affair through my attorney, he who knows as well as I, that it is forbidden to attorneys. Ah, great heavens! cannot an innocent man be lost without laughing in his face! Thus, Monsieur, have I been grievously insulted, justice has been denied me because my adversary is a man of quality, I have been put in prison, I am kept there, because I have been insulted by a man of quality. They even go so far as to blame me for enlightening the police as to the false impressions they have received, while the immodest gazettes Les Deux-Ponto and Hollande unworthily dishonor me to please my adversary. A little more and they would say that it was very insolent in me to have been outraged