“Your deputy shall receive as soon as possible full power and authority to accept what I shall deliver to him, to receive my accounts, examine them, make payments upon them or enter into engagements which you shall be bound to ratify as the head of the brave people to whom I am devoted. In short, you may always treat of your interests directly with me.
“Notwithstanding the open opposition which the King of France and his ministers show, and ought to show, to the violation of foreign treaties ... I dare promise you, gentlemen, that my indefatigable zeal shall never be wanting to clear up all difficulties, soften prohibitions, and, in short, facilitate all operations of commerce....
“One thing can never diminish; it is the avowed and ardent zeal which I have in serving you to the utmost of my power....
“Look upon my house, then, gentlemen, henceforth, as the chief of all useful operations to you in Europe and my person as one of the most zealous partisans of your cause, the soul of your success, and a man most deeply impressed with the respectful esteem with which I have the honor to be, etc.
“Roderigue Hortalès et Cie.”
“It must be admitted,” says Loménie, “that the letters of Beaumarchais were curious enough by their medley of patriotism and commercialism, both equally sincere with him, to inspire distrust in the minds already prejudiced. Imagine serious Yankees, who nearly all before having made war had been merchants, receiving masses of stuff, embarked often in secret, during the night, and whose bills presented in consequence certain irregularities, accompanied with letters in which Beaumarchais associated protestations of enthusiasm, offers of limitless services, political counsels and demands for tobacco, indigo, and salt fish.
“The calculating minds of the Yankees were naturally inclined to think that a being so ardent and fantastic, if he really existed, was playing a commercial comedy concurred in by the government and that one might with all security of conscience utilize his remittances, read his amplifications, and dispense with sending him tobacco,” which, as we shall soon see, was exactly what happened.
Infinite difficulties and complications, however, were to arise before even the first shipments could leave the ports of France, and in August the cargoes were not yet collected.
The sixteenth of August Beaumarchais wrote to Vergennes:
“It is decided that all vessels coming from America shall be addressed to the house of Hortalès.... So many things must be carried on together without counting the manufacture of cloth and linen, that I am forced to take on more workers. This affair politico-commerçante is becoming so immense that I shall drown myself in details as well as the few aids which I have employed up to the present time, if I do not add more. Some will travel, some reside in the seaports, the manufactories, etc.