The young man whom she married proved himself in every way worthy of her. In 1789 he was aide-de-camp of General Lafayette, and later held honorable official positions under the empire, the Restoration, and the government of July. In 1840 he was made maréchal de camp de la garde nationiale, which post he held until 1848 when he resigned, at the age of eighty-four years. “In 1854,” writes Loménie, “he still lives, surrounded in his flourishing old age by the respectful affection of all those who know how to appreciate the noble qualities of his heart and his character.”
But to return to Beaumarchais; hardly had he found himself reunited to his family than he wrote to his faithful Gudin, bidding him return. The Revolution, however, had left this good man so destitute that he was obliged to request a loan in order to make the journey. This was at once promised. He wrote, August 26, 1796, “I start as soon as I shall have received the ten louis.... My whole heart glows at the thought of finding myself again under the roof with your happy family. And Oh, I shall see you again! How I regret that aerostatic machines are not already perfected.... But any conveyance is good, if it only conducts me to you. Adieu my good friend; keep well. I will write you the moment of my setting out.”
Of their meeting, he writes later, “I came from the depths of my retreat to embrace my friend. Meeting after so many years, after so many atrocious events, was it not to be saved from the dangers of shipwreck and to find ourselves upon the rocks? It was in a way like escaping from the tomb, to embrace each other among the dead, after an unhoped for resurrection.”
Beaumarchais’s activities of this period continued to be the most varied. He entered with interest into the changing fortunes of the republic—which he accepted and over whose future he tried at times to become enthusiastic. In March, 1797, he had written to a friend:
“Yesterday’s dinner, my dear Charles, is one that will long remain in my memory because of the precious choice of convives which our friend Dumas [General Mathieu-Dumas, brother-in-law of M. Delarue] had assembled at the house of his brother. On former occasions when I dined with the great ones of the State, I have been shocked at the assemblage of so many whose birth alone allowed them to be admitted. Des sots de qualité, des imbéciles en place, des hommes vains de leurs richesses, des jeunes impudents, des coquettes, etc. If it was not the ark of Noah, it was at least the court of the Roi Petaut; but yesterday out of twenty-four persons at table, there was not one whose great personal merit would not have given him a right to his place. It was, I might say, an excellent extrait of the French Republic, and I, who sat silent, regarding them, applied to each the great merit which distinguished him. Here are their names:” And then, after making the inventory, he terminates thus:
“The dinner was instructive, in no way noisy, very agreeable, in a word such as I do not remember to have ever before experienced.
“Caron Beaumarchais.”
“Four months later,” says Loménie, “un coup d’état had proscribed nearly every one of those twenty-four convives.”
“The deputies of the people,” says Gudin, “were taken from their sacred seats, locked up in portable cages like wild beasts, tossed on board vessels and transported to Guyan.” This coup d’état cooled very considerably the republican ardor of Beaumarchais; “He was totally at a loss,” continues Gudin, “to understand either the men or their doings; he failed to comprehend anything relative to the forms or the means employed in those times without rule or principle. He called upon reason, which had helped him triumph so many times; reason had become a stranger, she was, if we dare say it, a species of émigrée whose name rendered suspicious anyone who invoqued her.”