Constant.”
Beaumarchais instantly replied:
“My good little friend Constant, I have received with much gratitude your letter and the purse which you joined to it. I have made a just division of what it contained among the prisoners, my companions, according to their different needs, while I have kept for your friend Beaumarchais the best part, I mean the prayers, the Ave Marias, of which I
certainly have need, and so have distributed to the poor people who suffer imprisonment all that the purse contained. Thus intending to oblige only a single man you have acquired the gratitude of many. This is the ordinary fruit of such good actions as yours.
“Bonjour, my little friend Constant,
Beaumarchais.”
And to the child’s mother he wrote at the same time: “I thank you very sincerely, Madame, for having sent me the letter and the purse of my little friend Constant. These are the first outbursts of the sensibility of a young soul which promise excellent things. Do not give him back his purse, in order that he may not think that such sacrifices bring a similar recompense, but later you may give it to him that he may have a reminder of the tenderness of his generous heart. Recompense him now in a way that will give him a just idea of his action without allowing him to pride himself upon it. But what am I thinking of to join my observations to the pains that have caused to germinate and to develop so great a quality as benevolence at an age when the only morality is to report everything to oneself. Receive my thanks and my compliments. Permit that M. l’abbé Leroux participate in them. He has not satisfied himself with teaching his pupils to decline the word virtue, he inculcates the love of it. He is a man full of merit and more fitted than anyone to second your views. This letter and the purse have caused me the joy of a child. Happy parents! You have a son capable at the age of six of this action. And I also had a son, I have him no more, and yours gives you already such happiness. I partake in it with all my heart, and I beg you to continue to love him a little who is the cause of this charming outburst of our little Constant.
One cannot add anything to the respectful attachment of him who honors himself, Madame, etc.
Beaumarchais.
From For-l’Evêque, March 4, 1773”
“And this,” says Loménie, “is the man whom the Comte de la Blache charitably calls a finished monster, a venomous species of which society should be purged, and at the moment when the count says this, it is the opinion almost universally adopted. It is in vain that Beaumarchais follows his guard and returns every evening to his prison, passing his day in hastening from one to another of his judges, the discredit attached to his name followed him everywhere.
“Under the influence of this discredit, and upon the report of the Counsellor Goëzman, the parliament decided at last between him and M. de la Blache, and gave, April 5th, 1773, a strange judgment from a legal point of view. This judgment, declared nul and of no effect the act made between the two majors, saying that there was no need of lettres de récision, that is to say, that the question of fraud, surprise or error being set aside, Beaumarchais found himself indirectly declared a forger although there was against him no inscription of forgery.”