the French Ambassador’s in the carosse of Madame the Marquise de La Croix, who has the goodness to drive me everywhere with her six mules. She is a charming lady who has great credit here by her rank, but still more by reason of her intelligence and the graces which make her dear to all the world. Her society dissipates the dust, the inaction, the ennui, the impatience which seize everyone who remains long in this place. I should die in this dull city if it were not for this delicious company.”
It is quite evident that Beaumarchais is thinking little of Pauline and he will soon find to his chagrin, that she has ceased to think any longer so tenderly of him.
He has not, however, forgotten her interests in Santo Domingo nor his project of going there to settle in case the turn of his affairs should point to that move as the best solution of the difficulties, but in the meantime, he amuses himself in his moments of leisure in the pleasantest way that offers itself.
But not only were the sisters of Beaumarchais living on hope and love, the elder Caron himself was entertaining the same guests as is proved by the following letter written by his son from Madrid.
“Monsieur and very dear father:—
“I am not surprised at your attachment for Madame Henry; she is cheerfulness itself, and has one of the best hearts that I know. I could wish you might have been happy enough to inspire a more lively return of affection. She would make you happy and you would certainly render agreeable this union founded upon reciprocal affection and an esteem which has lasted twenty-five years. If I were you, I know very well how I should go about it, and if I were she, I know also very well how I should reply; but I am neither the one nor the other and it is not for me to clear up this affair of yours, I have enough of my own.”
To which the elder Caron replied, September 19th, 1764, “We supped yesterday with my dear and good friend who laughed heartily when she saw the article in your letter, imagining as she very well could, the way in which you would go about this affair if you were in my place, so that as she says, she only embraces you with all her heart, because you are nine hundred miles away.”
But though the amiable Madame Henry was quite ready to laugh at the article in the son’s letter she does not appear to have been in any hurry to change the relationship which had so long existed between herself and the elder Caron, for shortly before his return from Madrid we find Beaumarchais writing in relation to the same matter: “A man ought not to be alone. One must hold to something in this life, and the society of your sons and daughters can only be sacrificed to another much sweeter, but which you do not seem on the point of acquiring. I precede my arrival by a picture of what should be, so that you may have time to determine what you ought to do before my return, which will be soon. What happiness for me, if on reaching there I could on the same day see assured the felicity of my father and my sister.”
Unfortunately for us, Beaumarchais returned from Spain in May, 1765, so that the correspondence ceased and with it, our means of following in detail the lives of those in whom we have begun to take so warm an interest. The “felicity” of the father we know, however, to have been consummated, for on January 15, 1766, he was united in marriage with the woman of his choice, Madame Henry, she being then sixty years of age and he sixty-eight. After two years of happy married life, Madame Caron died and we find her husband again returning to the rue Condé to live with his dearly loved son.
In the meantime, Mademoiselle de Boisgarnier had taken the advice of her brother, and we cannot for a moment doubt that she acted wisely; for her lover, Janot de Miron, seems to have been a man of exceptionally fine character. Referring to the letter already quoted in which Beaumarchais pleads with his sister for her friend, M. de Loménie says, “In reading this eulogy of poor Miron, where his moral qualities are exalted rather to the detriment of his brilliant ones, we have need to remember that Beaumarchais previously had declared his friend was not wanting in external accomplishments; and truly he was not. Miron, judging from his letters was rather pedantic, but in no way stupid. The taste for poetry and art, which reigned in the Caron family was no stranger to him. After several years of torment, he succeeded in touching that disdainful little heart and thus his constancy was rewarded. Mademoiselle de Boisgarnier, suitably endowed by her brother, married in 1767 M. de Miron, whom the influence of Beaumarchais later succeeded in having appointed Secrétaire des Commandements du Prince de Conti.
In all these matters it will be seen that Beaumarchais did not set himself up to be dictator in his family but was actuated solely by the desire to see consummated the dearest wish of those about him. Pauline he accepted as a settled fact of his existence, treating her as though he were her brother rather than her lover. His taste led him naturally to women more mature in years and experience, and he was far less sentimental than Pauline.
We shall see presently, as we come to treat of Beaumarchais as an author, that though through flashes of inspiration he may at times attain the heights of the heroic, yet he has in reality small sympathy with it, either in life or literature. At no time, do we find him possessed of one of those absorbing passions which devour all lesser ones and which alone make sacrifice, not only necessary but easy; sacrifice is always distasteful to him. He has an intense desire to be happy and to have all about him happy. We must not expect, in this wise to find him a hero. Beaumarchais is pre-eminently a modern man, and it is no accident that he should have been an instrument to aid in laying the foundations of that modern nation, which more than any other, has brought case and comfort within the reach of every class and condition of men.
CHAPTER V
“Les serments Des amants Sont légers comme les vents, Leur air enchanteur, Leur douceur Sont des pièges trompeurs Cachés sous des fleurs.”
Séguedille de Beaumarchais
New study of Beaumarchais by Lintilhac—Beaumarchais’s Return from Madrid—The Lover of Julie Carries off Pauline—the Règlement de compte which Terminated this Romantic Chapter of the Life of Beaumarchais.
AMONG the numerous studies of the life of Beaumarchais which the admirable and scholarly work of M. de Loménie stimulated into being, none takes a higher place than that of Eugène Lintilhac. Fired into enthusiasm by the work of Loménie, and having as he has said, his curiosity rather stimulated than satisfied thereby, he demanded of the descendants of Beaumarchais leave to examine for himself the entire mass of manuscript which had served as the foundation of that great work. He was also actuated, as he tells us, by the sentiment so forcibly expressed by Gudin, “I soon found that I could not love him moderately when I came to know him in his home,” and it was this sentiment which made him desire to refute from direct evidence some unsympathetic writings which had appeared, writings in which the character of Beaumarchais is inverted and all his great and disinterested actions viewed from the standpoint of whatever was ordinary about him, or whatever could be tortured into appearing so, thus making everything seem petty and contemptible, as when a telescope is reversed and all its power directed towards diminishing the objects upon which it is turned.
Many of the letters which we have already quoted were first published by him, and we shall have occasion, more than once to have recourse to his volume. In the family correspondence M. Lintilhac found several fragments of letters written by friends and especially by one M. de la Chataignerie, a man at that time well advanced in years, but devoted to the interests of his friend and who had been left with a certain oversight of the family. He wrote: “The dear sister, who though slightly indisposed, conserves her reason, at least so far as essentials go, begs you to bring everything that you find which is good in all the places where you pass, even the hams of Bayonne. Time presses because the little dog of a Boisgarnier
