THE BASTILLE
But let us now turn from this gloomy picture and cast a glance at the home life of this man so buffeted before the world.
Bonneville de Marsangy, in his life of Madame de Beaumarchais has drawn the picture for us. He says:
“Beaumarchais, in consequence of the noise which continued to be made about his name, was none the less one of the personages the most sought after of the capital. Whatever he says about it, the fact is that he lived in great style. His stables contained as many as ten horses. He kept open table; strangers of distinction, desirous of knowing the popular author of so many celebrated works, solicited the honor of being presented to him. He received men of distinction in politics, in letters and arts, and women the most sought after, in the midst of whom the mistress of the house shone in the first rank by her esprit, her education, and her charms.... Nearly every evening in the Hotel Boulevard St. Antonie, there was talking, music, playing, although the master never took part in play. His esprit was equally free, equally alert, his fancy inexhaustible. It is there he loved to read his new productions, and he excelled at that. Arnault recounts one of these literary reunions at which he assisted, ‘in a great circular salon, partly ornamented with mirrors, partly with landscapes of vast dimensions, and half of which was occupied by seats for placing the auditors. Upon an estrade, furnished with a desk, stood the armchair of the reader. There, as in a theatre, Beaumarchais read, or rather played his dramas; because it is to play, if one delivers a piece in as many different inflexions of the voice as there are different personages in the action; because it is to play if one gives to each one of the personages the pantomime which should characterize him.’” (Arnault, Souvenirs d’un sexagénaire, Vol. IV.)
And Gudin adds another touch to the portrait of this many-sided man; after speaking of the loss of his mother, dying in her eighty-third year, he said:
“Beaumarchais came at once to see me, offered me all the consolations of friendship, and reclaimed the promise which we had given one another long ago, to unite the rest of the days which nature reserved to us.
“It is thus that I found in the family of my friend all those attentions which could sweeten the irreparable loss of the tenderest mother and one whom I had quitted almost never.”
In 1787 Beaumarchais had accumulated a sufficient fortune to contemplate the building of a superb residence, for which he already had bought the land in that section of the City of Paris now occupied by the Boulevard which bears his name. It was directly opposite the Bastille, and was not yet completed on the memorable 14th of July, 1789, when the ancient fortress was destroyed. This residence cost the owner one million six hundred and sixty-three thousand francs. “Une folie,” Napoleon called it. When in 1818, the government bought the property so as to make way for the new boulevard, they paid the heirs of Beaumarchais only five hundred thousand francs. As an investment, therefore, it was far from successful; but as a residence, it was, while it lasted, one of the sights of the city, and was regarded as such. It was the very last word in elegance and comfort, and rivaled the most sumptuous palaces of the capital. In the beginning, it was always open to the public, but so vast became the horde of visitors, that very soon entrance was obtainable only by tickets (though these were never refused to anyone who asked politely for them).