“Beaumarchais.”
But the young girl’s presence under her father’s roof was to be of short duration. Very soon, his anxiety for their safety led him to dispatch his family to Havre. For, says La Harpe,
HOUSE OF BEAUMARCHAIS
“His house was placed at the entrance of that terrible faubourg like the Palace of Portici at the foot of Vesuvius.... The eruption of the volcano was as yet only at rare intervals; that of the faubourg was at every moment. It is inconceivable that under the lava always boiling, that house was not engulfed.”
So it is here we will leave him to await alone,—except for his faithful Gudin—the coming of the storm, which his own writings had done so much to rouse, but which he neither desired, nor, to the end, comprehended.