“I came again,” he says, “to my native city, delighted to see my friend, and to find his family augmented. We tasted the sweetness of friendship the most intimate. I saw him abandon himself in our conversations to the most vivid hope for the prosperity of the state and of our arms.
“Beaumarchais, at this time, was full of force and of health. Never were his days devoured by so many plans, projects, labors and enterprises.... His age allowed us to hope that we might retain him a long while.
“We had spent the day together in the midst of his family, with one of his oldest friends. He had been very gay and had recalled in the conversation several events of his youth, which he recounted with a charming complacency.... I did not leave him until ten o’clock; he retired at eleven, after embracing his wife. She was slightly indisposed; he recommended her to take some precautions for her health,—his own seemed perfect. He went to bed as usual, and wakened early. He went to sleep again and wakened no more. He was found next morning in the same attitude in which he placed himself on going to bed.”
An attack of apoplexie foudroyante had carried him off at the age of sixty-seven years and three months. This was on the 18th of May, 1799.
The suddenness of the death of Beaumarchais caused, as may be imagined, the most profound sorrow to his family and friends.
Madame de Beaumarchais wrote a few days after his death:
“Our loss is irreparable. The companion of twenty-five years of my life has disappeared, leaving me only useless regrets, a frightful solicitude and memories that nothing can efface.... He forgave easily, he willingly forgot injuries.... He was a good father, zealous friend, defender of the absent who were attacked before him. Superior to petty jealousies, so common among men of letters, he counselled, encouraged all, and aided them with his purse and his advice.
“To the philosophic eye, his end should be regarded as a favor. He left this life, or rather, it left him, without struggle, without pain, or any of those rendings inevitable in the frightful separation from all those dear to him. He went out of life as unconsciously as he entered it.”
“The inventory,” says Gudin in his narrative, “which is made at a man’s death, often reveals the secrets of his life. That of Beaumarchais showed us that to succor families in distress, artists, men of letters, men of quality, he had advanced more than 900,000 francs without hope that these sums ever should be repaid. If one adds to these, sums that he had lavished without leaving the least trace, one would be convinced that he had expended more than 2,000,000 in benevolences.”