offer of marriage, they also contain certain passages sufficiently mortifying, so that the pride of Pauline would reply by a refusal. Again it is evident that Beaumarchais fears a refusal and whether from love or self esteem he wishes to triumph.”
“You have renounced me,” he wrote to Pauline, “and what time have you chosen to do it? The very moment which I had announced to your friends and mine, would be that of our union. I have seen the perfidy which has caused everything to turn against me, even to my offers. I have seen you, you who have so often sighed at the injustice which others have done me, join yourself to them to create wrongs of which I never thought. If I had not had the intention of marrying you, would I have put so little form into the services which I rendered you? Would I have assembled your friends and mine two months before your refusal, to announce to them my resolution? Everything has turned against me. The conduct of a friend, two-faced and perfidious, in giving me a cruel lesson, has taught me that there is no woman so honest and so tender who cannot be seduced and made to change. Also the contempt of all those who have seen him act, is his just recompense. Let us come back to you. It is not without regret that I have turned my thoughts from you, since the first heat of my resentment has passed, and when I insisted that you should write formally that you refused my offer of marriage, there was mixed with my chagrin, an obscure curiosity to see whether you would take this last step with me; to-day I must know absolutely how I stand. I have received very advantageous propositions of marriage, on the point of accepting I felt myself suddenly arrested; I do not know what scruple of honor, what return toward the past, made me hesitate. I have every reason to feel myself free and disengaged from you after all that has passed; nevertheless, I am far from tranquil, your letters do not say formally enough what is most important for me to know. Reply truly, I beg of you. Have you so completely renounced me that I am free to contract with another woman? Consult your heart upon this point, while my delicacy questions you. If you totally have cut the knot which should unite us, don’t fear to tell me so. In order that your amour-propre be completely at ease upon the demand which I make, I add this, that in writing to you I have put back everything to where it was before all these storms. My demand would not be just if, setting a trap for you, I did not give you the liberty of choice in your reply. Let your heart answer alone. If you do not give me back my liberty, write me that you are the same Pauline, sweet and tender for life, whom I used to know, and that you believe yourself happy to belong to me, instantly I break with everything that is not you. If your heart is turned to another, and invincibly estranged from me, do me the justice of admitting that I have been honest with you. Give to the bearer of this, the declaration which frees me and I shall feel that I have accomplished my duty and shall have no reproach to make myself. Adieu, I am, up to the moment of your reply, under whatever title it shall please you to choose, Mademoiselle, your very humble servant, etc.
De Beaumarchais.”
A few hours later followed a second letter: “I send you back the package of your letters, if you keep them, join mine to your reply. The reading of your letters has moved me deeply, I do not wish again to experience that pain, but before replying examine well what is the best for you, as well for your fortune as for your happiness. My intent is that, forgetting everything, we pass our days in tranquillity and happiness. Do not let the fear of living with the members of my family who do not please you arrest your sensibility, if another passion has not extinguished it. My home is so arranged that whether it be you, or whether it be another, my wife shall be the peaceful and happy mistress there. Your uncle laughed in my face when I reproached him with having opposed me. He told me that his opinion was that I need not fear a refusal or else that his niece’s head had been turned. It is true that at the moment of renouncing you forever, I felt an emotion which showed me that I held more strongly to you than I thought. What I write therefore is from the sincerest faith in the world. Don’t flatter yourself ever to give me the chagrin to see you the wife of a certain man. He must be very daring to think of raising his eyes before the public if he proposes to accomplish this double perfidy. Pardon me if I grow warm! Never has that thought entered my mind that all my blood has not boiled in my veins.
“But whatever your resolution, don’t keep me waiting, because I have suspended all my business to give myself over once more to you. Your uncle tried to convince me that this marriage with you was not all to my advantage, but I am very far from occupying myself with these considerations. I wish to possess you only for yourself, and that it be for life. … I admit that it would be sweet to me, if while the enemies slept, peace should be concluded between us. Re-read your letters and you will understand that I found again in the depths of my heart all the sentiments that they had there called into being.”
Loménie remarks: “The reply of Pauline is much more laconic and much more direct. With her there is no conflict of sentiments: she does not love Beaumarchais any more; that is very simple and very clear.
“ ‘I can only repeat, Monsieur, what I said to Mademoiselle your sister, that my stand is taken not to return, therefore I thank you for your offers, and I desire with my whole heart that you may marry the person who will make you happy; I assured Mademoiselle your sister of this. My aunt and I feel it our duty to tell you how unhappy we are that you should fail in respect to us in treating so badly a man whom we consider as our friend. I know better than anyone else that you have no right to call him perfidious. I said once more this morning to Mademoiselle your sister, that a demoiselle who used to live with my aunt was the cause of what happens to-day. You have still several of my letters which I ask you to return. I will beg one of our friends to arrange with you about everything which remains to be adjusted. I am, very perfectly, Monsieur, your very humble and obedient servant,
L. B——.’ ”
Still quoting Loménie: “Pauline who used to sign herself, ‘I am for life thy faithful Pauline’ now signs politely her family name, and so this correspondence ends like so many others of the same nature, by, ‘I have the honor to be,’ or ‘I am very perfectly’ which succeed the protestations of an eternal love.”
And now follows a second letter from the cousin in relation to this unhappy affair, “All is said, my dear Beaumarchais, and without hope of return. I have notified Madame G. (the aunt of Pauline) and Mlle. Le B—— of your dispositions, they ask nothing better than to come to an honorable arrangement in this rupture. It remains now to regulate the account between Mlle. Le B—— and you, and to take measures to secure for you the sum which is due. These ladies beg you to give back all the papers which you have concerning the affairs of Mlle. Le B——. You cannot tell how unhappy I am not to have been able to unite two hearts which for so long have seemed to me made for each other, but man proposes and God disposes. I flatter myself that on both sides the justice which I feel belongs to me, will be rendered. I have let you read in my heart, and you must have seen that I know neither disguisement nor artifice. Adieu, my friend, I will go to see you as soon as I can; in the meantime write to me. I embrace you, I am as always,
“Your sincere friend P——
“February 11th, 1766—”
In the words of Loménie, “Let us accord this worthy cousin, whose sentences are more consoling than new, the justice which he claims, and acknowledge that he is a stranger to the perfidy of the Chevalier. If we were writing a romance we would stop here, or else end with the death of Beaumarchais, he killing himself in despair, or by the death of the Chevalier, immolated by the fury of his rival; but as we are writing a history we are obliged above all else to be exact and instead of stating that the adventure ends by a suicide or a duel we are forced to state that it terminates much more prosaically, by a règlement de comptes where the future author of the Mariage de Figaro makes an amusing enough figure in his rôle of betrayed lover and uneasy creditor.”
There is, we must admit, an indefinable humor in the idea of the brilliant genius Beaumarchais, deserted by his Pauline, seating himself, le coeur gros, the tears of anger and mortification welling to his eyes, intent upon regulating, with the same minute exactitude that he showed in making the watch to be set as
