“I have promised tobacco to the Farmers-General, and I ask it of the Americans. Their hemp will be a good commodity. At last I begin to see the way clear for my business. The only thing which I do not see are those fatal letters-patent of which I have neither wind nor news.... M. de Maurepas tells me every time he sees me, ‘It is attended to, it is finished.’... I should have had them Tuesday. Here it is Friday, but the letters have not come. At the end of the session of parliament this delay of three days makes me lose three months, because of vacation. I am not angry but distressed to see my condition so equivocal and my future uncertain.” (Doniol, V. I, p. 513-14.)
As shown in the above letter, Beaumarchais while beginning his extraordinary operations for the Americans was not forgetful of his own interests. He was still a civilly degraded man with no solid basis upon which to build. Gudin, in his history of Beaumarchais, says: “Arriving from London, May, 1776, he presented a petition to the council in order to obtain letters of relief; that is, letters of the king by which it was permitted him to appeal from the judgment rendered against him, although the delay accorded by law had long expired.
“The development of his projects called him to the west coast of France; he did not wish to go until his request was admitted.
“‘Go all the same,’ M. de Maurepas said to him. ‘The council will pronounce very well without you.’”
The projects alluded to by Gudin were, of course, his mercantile operations for supplying the Americans with munitions of war. But so well did Beaumarchais guard his secret, that his dearest friend knew as little of the real nature of his enterprise as the rest of the world. In his visit to the ports of France during the summer of 1776, Gudin accompanied him. Their reception at Bordeaux is described by the latter.
Here as elsewhere, Beaumarchais hid his real occupation under the show of seeking amusement.
“When it was known,” says Gudin, “of our arrival, invitations poured in upon us from every side; the women received him as the most amiable of men, the merchants as the most intelligent, the crowds as the most extraordinary; we passed several days in the midst of festivities.... All the while Beaumarchais was preparing new commercial combinations.
“One evening, on entering, he found several letters from Paris; he read them while I was preparing for bed, hurried by fatigue to repose myself. I asked him if he was satisfied with his news.
“‘Very well,’ he said to me without the least emotion. I was soon asleep. In the morning I felt myself pulled by the arm; I wakened, recognized him and asked if he were ill.