“M. le Comte:
“You have seemed to take a too obliging interest in my fearful situation, for me to allow you to remain ignorant a moment of the excessive joy which I have felt since yesterday. Yesterday, my teeth clenched with fury to be without news, I waited the moment to close my case, refusing to make any payment the 15th, which falling due to-day Sunday, was exigible yesterday, the 14th. Read, M. le Comte, read I implore you what I received at 2 o’clock, and what I replied this morning, see, my joy is excessive. I am no longer exposed to the dishonor of a bankruptcy, which, notwithstanding all my efforts, I could never have justified, without an involuntary and fatal indiscretion. M. le Comte de Maurepas received me Monday, like a corsaire who had failed in respect to our flag. I did not say a word, I would have had too much to say. I withdrew, death in my heart. Not that I thought the interests of America abandoned. I know very well that they are not....
“The profound silence which I have imposed upon myself for the past two months, since the departure of the brother of M. Deane, secretly embarked at Bordeaux and bearing ... but this shall be matter for another letter. It is just that M. de Maurepas learns through me of this affair, for if the fear of the most frightful misfortune has rendered me pressing solicitor, I am not a man without virtue; it will be the strongest proof which I can offer of the resignation with which I know how to support the coldness and disdain of those who have protected me. Ah! but I am again saved. It is to you that I render a million thanks for all the efforts which you have made in my favor. Never will I forget the generous efforts which you have made to save me from ruin....”
The moment of the open alliance between France and America was now hastening forward. With it, ends the first phase of the war of the United States against England, “phase heroic by its enterprise, its constancy, its privations, by the serenity of its chief and by the results obtained, if one considers the nature and quality of the soldiers.” (Doniol III, 260.)
It was to this period that the activities of Beaumarchais in the cause of America essentially belong. The operations, however, now so well under way, he continued to carry on through his agent de Francy, though from henceforward they are wholly private in character.
CHAPTER XXI
“Any crisis which puts in peril all that society undertakes to secure to us by its laws, uncovers our hearts to the world, strips our native selfishness of all its disguises, and makes us appear to each other pretty nearly as bad as we must always appear to the angels.”