“The success of this Aristophanic comedy,” writes De Loménie, “while it filled some persons with anxiety and alarm, naturally roused the curious crowd, who are never wanting, particularly when a successful person takes a pleasure in spreading his fame abroad—and this foible of Beaumarchais is well known. It was in the midst of a fire of epigrams in prose and verse that the author of the Marriage of Figaro pursued his career, pouring out on his enemies not torrents of fire and light, but torrents of liveliness and fun.”
Beaumarchais, on the famous first night, sat in a loge grillée—a private box, that is to say, with lattice-work in front—between two abbés, with whom he had been dining, and whose presence seemed indispensable to him, in order, as he said, that they might administer to him des secours très spirituels in case of death.{46}
The Marriage of Figaro was represented sixty-eight times in succession, and each time with the greatest possible success. In eight months, from April 27th, 1784, till January 10th, 1785, the piece brought the Théâtre Français, without counting the fiftieth representation (which, at Beaumarchais’s request, was given for the poor), no less than 346,197 livres or francs; an immense sum for that period. When all expenses had been paid, there remained a profit of 293,755 livres for division amongst the actors, after the deduction from it of Beaumarchais’s share as author, amounting to 41,469 livres.
All sorts of anecdotes were told in connection with the success of the work. A gentleman—whom gossip transformed into a duke—wrote to Beaumarchais, asking for a loge grillée for himself and two ladies who wished to see the piece without being seen. Beaumarchais replied that he had no sympathy with persons who wished to combine “the honours of virtue with the pleasures of vice”; and, moreover, that his comedy was not a work which honourable persons need be ashamed to see.
The Boulevard Beaumarchais of the present day was (as already mentioned) called, until some fifty years after the Revolution, Boulevard St.-Antoine; where, until 1789, the year of its destruction, stood the celebrated fortress and prison of the Bastille. The destruction of the Bastille was the first event in the French Revolution; and many have asked why the fury of the crowd was particularly directed against a building which, monument of tyranny though it was, had never been employed against the people at large, but almost always against members of the aristocracy, on whose behalf the Revolutionists were certainly not fighting. But although the dungeons of the Bastille were for the most part filled with political offenders, persons of every station in life did, from time to time, find themselves enclosed within its walls.
The too celebrated fortress was originally built to protect the east of Paris, as the Louvre was constructed to guard the west. It stood on the south side of the boulevard now known by the name of Beaumarchais, and consisted of eight towers, four of which looked towards the town—that is to say, the Rue St.-Antoine—and four towards the country—that is to say, the Faubourg St.-Antoine.
Above the shop of the wine-seller who inhabits No. 232 in the Rue St.-Antoine, at the corner of the newly-built Rue Jacques-Cœur, a marble tablet sets forth that the house in question occupies the site of the outlying building into which the assailants, on the 14th of July, 1789, made their way before storming the fortress itself. The café which stands at the corner of the street and of the square bears for its sign, “The Cannon of the Bastille.”
It was less as a fortress than as a State prison that the Bastille was known, and by the nation at large execrated. Prisoners were taken to the Bastille on a simple lettre de cachet: a sealed order or warrant, which was sometimes given out blank, so that the favoured recipient might make whatever use of it he pleased, against no matter whom. The victims were introduced secretly into the fortress; and the soldiers on guard had instructions to turn aside when any prisoner was being brought in, so that they might not afterwards recognise him. Once inside the dungeon, he was liable to undergo frequent interrogations without even knowing on what charge, or even suspicion, he had been arrested. The treatment in prison depended absolutely on the will of the governor. Those under detention were kept in solitary confinement, without anyone outside being able to obtain news as to whether they even existed. They were not allowed to receive letters from their family or friends. The internal regulations of the Bastille are sufficiently well known to us by the numerous chronicles and memoirs published in connection with it, including, in particular, those of Linguet. “During the seven years that I passed in the Bastille,” says M. Pelissery, quoted by Linguet, “I had no air even in fine weather, and in winter they gave me nothing in the way of fuel except wood just taken from the river. My bed was intolerable, and the bedclothes dirty and worm-eaten. I drank, or rather poisoned myself with, foul stagnant water. What food they brought me! Famished dogs would not have touched it. Accordingly, my body was soon covered with pustules, my legs gave way beneath me, I spat blood, and became scorbutic. The dungeons received neither light nor air, except by one narrow window pierced in a wall nearly five metres thick, and traversed by a triple row of bars, between which there were intervals of only five centimetres. Even on the most beautiful days the prisoners received but feeble rays of light. In the winter these fatal caves resembled ice-houses, being sufficiently raised for the cold to penetrate; while in summer they were like damp stoves, in {47} which it was difficult not to be stifled, since the walls are so thick as to keep out the heat necessary for drying the interior. There are some rooms—and mine was one of them—which look out directly upon the moat into which flows the great sewer of the Rue St.-Antoine. Thence ascends a pestilential exhalation, which, when once it has entered these rooms, can only with much difficulty be got out again. It is in such an atmosphere that the prisoner has to breathe. There, not to be absolutely stifled, he is obliged to pass his nights and days glued to the inside bars of the little window in the door, through which a glimmer of light and a breath of air may reach him.”
“The history of the Bastille as a State prison,” says Mongin, “might almost be said to include everything intellectual and political in France. Into its dungeons were thrown, one after the other, Hugues; Aubriot, who himself founded the Bastille, and who expiated by perpetual imprisonment his alleged heresy and his love relations with a Jewess; Jacques d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, in 1475; with many high and powerful noblemen in the time of Louis XI. and Richelieu. Here also were confined Marshal de Biron and Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, besides more than one officer of distinction under Louis XIV.”
When the Bastille had done its work on the last remains of feudalism and on the Court aristocracy, the turn came of the people—the precursors of the Republic, the martyrs of the Revolution. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the Bastille was filled with Protestants. Here were shut up the Jansenists and the fanatics known as the Convulsionnaires. Here, too, suffered, until he was taken to the scaffold, the brave Governor of India under the French domination, Lally, who had given offence to the Court rather than to the sovereign. Voltaire, Mirabeau, Linguet (who, after making his escape, published in London his eloquent account of the cruelties to which prisoners in the Bastille were subjected), Latude, and numberless other men distinguished in different walks of life.