CHAPTER XXVI
“Qu’étais’je donc? Je n’étais que moi, et moi tel que je suis resté, libre au milieu des fers, serein dans les plus grands dangers, faisant tête a tous les orages, menant les affaires d’une main et la guerre de l’autre, paresseux comme un âne et travaillant toujours, en butte à mille calomnies, mais, heureux dans mon intérieur, n’ayant jamais été d’aucune coterie, ni litéraire, ni politique, ni mystique, n’ayant fait de cour à personne, et partout repoussé de tous.... C’est le mystère de ma vie, en vain j’essaie de le résoudre.”
Beaumarchais After His Return from Exile—Takes Up All His Business Activities—Marriage of Eugénie—Her Portrait Drawn by Julie—Beaumarchais’s Varied Interests—Correspondence with Bonaparte—Pleads for Lafayette Imprisoned—Death of Beaumarchais—Conclusion.
ON his return to Paris, July 5th, 1796, “Beaumarchais,” says Loménie, “found himself faced with a fortune ruined, not alone as so many others had been in the general crisis, but still more, by the confiscation of his revenues, the disappearance of his papers, and of the debts owing to him. His beautiful house was going to destruction, his garden torn up. While on one hand his debtors had disembarrassed themselves of their obligations by settling with the state in paper money, his creditors were waiting to seize him by the throat. He had accounts to give to, and to demand of the State, who, after confiscating his fortune, held still [274] 745,000 francs deposited by him when he undertook the mission to secure the 60,000 guns....”
Not to go into all the perplexing details of the decisions and counter decisions rendered by the State, the anxieties, the almost insuperable difficulties that surrounded him on every side, let it suffice to say that with old age advancing apace, he still retained almost the same vigor, the same tenacity of purpose, the same indefatigable energy that have characterized him through life. Without ceasing, he drew up memoirs, conferred with the ministers, worked day and night to re-establish his fortune, so that those dear to him might not be left in want.
That he eventually succeeded in this may be judged by the fact that his family continued to inhabit their splendid residence until 1818, when the French government under the Restoration bought it for purposes of public utility. Moreover, the report rendered after his death by his bookkeeper, shows that the fortune which he was able to will his family rose very near the million mark, and this, not counting the debts owing him and lawsuits still pending, notably that with the United States.
But at the moment of his return to France it was not simply with his shattered fortune that Beaumarchais’s mind was occupied. During their sojourn at Havre in 1792, the wife and daughter of Beaumarchais had made the acquaintance, says Bonneville, “of a young man of distinguished family, Louis André Toussaint Delarue, whose sister, a woman of remarkable intelligence, had married M. Mathias Dumas, a soldier with a very great future, who, after having taken part brilliantly in the war of American Independence as aide-de-camp of Rochambeau, was now Adjutant General of the Army under the orders of Lafayette, and had attached to him his young brother-in-law as officier d’ordonnance.... In 1792 they all found themselves waiting in Havre for an opportunity to escape into England.”
It was there that M. Delarue met Mlle. Eugénie.... The two young people coming together under these unusual circumstances soon learned to love one another. His determination to obtain her hand in marriage was not at all affected by the fact that at that moment the entire possessions of her father were lost. Beaumarchais on his return to France, touched by so much constancy and devotion, hastened to assure the happiness of the young people. “Five days after my arrival,” he wrote to a friend, “I made him the beautiful present.... They will at least have bread, but that is all, unless America discharges her debt to me, after twenty years of ingratitude.”
They were married June 15th, 1796, Eugénie being nineteen, and her husband twenty-eight years of age. On the eve of her marriage, the Aunt Julie sketches for a friend the portrait of the young girl, in which she shows her as one in every way worthy of her father’s affection—and with a character which, while indicating many contradictory possibilities, had, nevertheless, great charm and lovableness as well as intellectual force. It shows, too, that the terrible experiences through which she had passed, had left their trace upon her. Time, however, softened this very complex and somewhat formal young lady. “Dying in 1820 the daughter of the author of the Mariage de Figaro,” says Loménie, “left in the hearts of all who knew her, the memory of a person of charming vivacity, of finesse and goodness; loving and cultivating the arts with passion, an excellent musician, woman of the world, and at the same time an accomplished mother.”