“We knew that the commissioner was his friend, still the conference made us uneasy. At length they came out together. Beaumarchais embraced us, as he said he would be obliged to go out and perhaps to pass the night away from home. He begged us not to be uneasy and that the next day we should be informed as to the cause of his going.
“These words, far from calming, troubled us. We could not doubt that he had been arrested, but why? Where would they take him? Perhaps to the Bastille?...
“Not to the Bastille, nor to Vincennes, but to St. Lazare, a prison house of correction for delinquent youths, he, a man of mature age, of the constancy, of the fortune of M. de Beaumarchais, treated as a depraved adolescent! It was a cowardly outrage.
“His enemies were charmed to see him thus humiliated. The consternation was general. Lafayette, the Prince de Nassau-Siegen, and other noblemen appealed instantly in his favor. At the end of five days he was liberated....
“I went with his wife and daughter and the Commissioner Chenu to bring him the news of his release. His first reaction was to refuse liberty.
“‘I have done nothing to merit having lost it,’ he said, ‘I shall not go from here until judged and justified....’
“If he had not been husband and father, his obstinacy would no doubt have carried him to the point of demanding justice of the king against the king himself ... but he could not permit himself to pierce the hearts of his wife and daughter by condemning them to eternal tears in the vain hope of tearing from power the avowal of an injustice....
“Princes, Marshals of France, persons of every rank had inscribed their names at his door during his detention and came to felicitate him on his return....”
And what was the cause that had operated to bring about this sudden outburst of power directed against the author of the Mariage de Figaro?
It was this. In a dispute carried on with vigor in the pages of le Journal de Paris, between Beaumarchais and certain anonymous attacks directed against him, the former had made use of the expression, “After having been forced to conquer lions and tigers to have my comedy played....”