In the words of Bonnefon, “Precisely the counsellor designated as rapporteur in the affair of Beaumarchais by la Blache was one of the least scrupulous members of that strange parliament. A learned legist, he had begun his career as judge of the superior council of Alsace, and the chancellor Maupeou, in quest of magistrates who could be bought, had raised him to his new functions.
“Valentine Goëzman was not overly scrupulous in regard to the means of conviction employed and if he kept his doors well closed to all litigants it was only to make them
open all the wider by the money of those who solicited his audiences.
“Needy himself he had married a second wife, young and coquettish, even less delicate than her husband as to the choice of means. ‘It would be impossible,’ she was heard to say, ‘it would be impossible for us to live from what is given us, but we know how to pick the chicken without making it cry out.’”
It was a certain publisher, who according to Loménie, “hearing that Beaumarchais was in despair at not being able to find access to his reporter, sent him word that the only means of obtaining the audience and assuring the equity of the judge was to make a present to his wife, who demanded two hundred louis.”
But of this strange proceeding, let us allow the victim to step forward and speak for himself. In the exposition made in the first of those famous memoirs of which we shall soon speak, Beaumarchais wrote: “A few days before the one appointed for the judgment of my suit, I had obtained from the minister permission to solicit my judges under the express and rigorous conditions of going accompanied by a guard, the sieur Santerre, named for this purpose, and of going only to the judges, returning to the prison for all my meals and to sleep, which exceedingly embarrassed my movements and shortened the time accorded for my solicitations.
“In this short interval I presented myself at least ten times at the office of Monsieur Goëzman without being able to see him. I was not very much affected by this. M. Goëzman was of the number of my judges but there was no pressing interest between us. On the first of April however when he was charged with the office of reporter of my suit he became essential to me.
“Three times that afternoon I presented myself at his
door always with the written formula, ‘Beaumarchais prays Monsieur to be so good as to accord him the favor of an audience, and to leave orders with the door keeper setting the hour and day.’ It was in vain. The next morning I was told that Monsieur Goëzman would see no one, and that it was useless to present myself again. I returned in the afternoon; the same reply.
“If one reflects that of the four days which were left me before the decision, one and a half had already been spent in vain solicitations and that twice a friend of Monsieur Goëzman had been to him and vainly pleaded for an audience for me, one can conceive of my disquietude.