been brought to Paris but that his life was despaired of—he learned that the sick man refused to name the one who had wounded him so seriously.
“ ‘I have only what I merit,’ he said. ‘I have provoked an honest man who never gave me any offense, to please people whom I do not esteem.’
“His relatives and friends were not able to draw any other reply from him during the eight days which he lived. He carried the secret to the tomb, leaving to Beaumarchais the regret of having taken the life of a man who proved so generous an enemy.
“ ‘Ah, young man,’ Beaumarchais said to me one day when I was joking over some duel which was then much talked about, ‘you do not know what despair a man feels when he sees the hilt of his sword upon his enemy’s breast!’ It was then that he related to me this adventure which was still afflicting him, although many years had elapsed since it had taken place. He never spoke of it without grief, and I should probably never have heard of it, if he had not thought it right to make me feel how dangerous it might be to joke about such fatal affairs, the number of which is increased much more by frivolity than by bravery.”
It may be well to add, in relation to the death of the Chevalier du C—— that the protection of Mesdames, who personally interceded with the King, prevented an investigation being made so that Beaumarchais was secure.
But while he was still holding his own in the envious crowd of courtiers at Versailles, his position was in reality far from desirable. Monsieur de Loménie says: “Having no other resource than the small income from his charge of contrôleur, not only was he obliged to put his time gratuitously at the disposal of the Princesses, without speaking of the cost of keeping up appearances, but he even at times found himself under the necessity of proceeding like a great lord, and of making advances for the purchase of costly instruments which they scarcely thought of promptly paying back. Very desirous of enriching himself, he was too clever to compromise his credit by receiving pecuniary recompense, which would have put him in the rank of a mercenary; he preferred to wait for some favorable occasion, when he might obtain a real advantage from his position, reserving the right to say later: ‘I have passed four years in meriting the good graces of Mesdames by the most assiduous and most disinterested pains bestowed upon divers objects of their amusements.’
“But Mesdames, like all other women and especially princesses, had sufficiently varied fancies which it was necessary to satisfy immediately. In the correspondence of Mme. du Deffant is the very amusing story of a box of candied quinces of Orleans, so impatiently demanded by Madame Victoire that the King, her father, sent in haste to the minister, M. de Choiseul, who sent to the Bishop of Orleans, who was awakened at three o’clock in the morning to give him, to his great affright, a missive from the King, running as follows:
“ ‘Monsieur the bishop of Orleans, my daughters wish some cotignac; they wish the very small boxes; send some. If you have none, I beg you … [in this place in the letter there was a drawing of a Sedan chair, and below] to send immediately into your episcopal city and get some, and be sure that they are the very small boxes; upon which, Monsieur the bishop of Orleans, may God have you in His holy keeping. Louis.’ Below in postscriptum is written: ‘The sedan chair, means nothing, it was designed by my girls upon the paper which I found at hand.’ A courier was immediately dispatched for Orleans. ‘The cotignac,’ says Madame du Deffant, ‘arrived the next day, but no one thought anything more of it.’
“It often happened that Beaumarchais received missives that recalled somewhat the history of the cotignac, with this difference, that the young and poor master of music, had not, like the bishop of Orleans, a courier at his disposal. Here, for example, is a letter addressed to him by the first lady in waiting of Madame Victoire:
“ ‘Madame Victoire has a taste, Monsieur, to play to-day on the tambourine, and charges me to write instantly that you may get her one as quickly as will be possible. I hope, Monsieur, that your cold has disappeared and that you will be able to attend promptly to the commission of Madame. I have the honor of being very perfectly, Monsieur, your very humble servant,
De Boucheman Coustillier.’
“It became necessary instantly to procure a tambourine worthy to be offered to a princess; the next day it was a harp; the day after a flute; and so on and so on.”
When the young Beaumarchais had completely exhausted his purse, very thin at that time, he very humbly sent his note to Mme. Hoppen, the stewardess of Mesdames, accompanying it with reflections of which the following is a sample:
“I beg you, Madame, to be so good as to pay attention to the fact that I have engaged myself for the payment of 844 livres, not being able to advance them, because I have given all the money that I had, and I beg you not to forget that I am in consequence, absolutely without a sol.
| Besides the | 1852 | livres |
| Madame Victoire owes me | 15 | ” |
| Then for the book bound in morocco with her arms and gilded | 36 | ” |
| And for copying the music into said book | 36 | ” |
| ——— | ||
| Total | 1939 | livres |
Which makes a sum of 80 louis, 19 livres.
“I do not count the cab fares which it cost me to go among the different workmen, who nearly all live in the suburbs, nor for the messages which all this occasioned, because I have never had the habit of making a note of these things or of counting them with Mesdames. Don’t forget, I beg you that Madame Sophie owes me five louis; in a time of misery one collects the smallest things.
“You know the respect and attachment which I have for you. I will not add another word.”
Four years spent in petty services of this kind was a severe test to the earnestness of purpose of a man fired with lofty ambitions and full of restless energy. Although at times suffering from secret irritation he remained master of himself and steadily refused to compromise his hope of great fortune by yielding to the dictates of present necessities. At last his patience was rewarded in a way worthy of the sacrifices he had made.
There was at this time a celebrated financier, named Paris du Verney, who for years had been organizing a great work, the École Militaire, actually in existence to-day on the Champs de Mars in Paris, but which seemed likely to languish at its beginning owing to the lack of Royal recognition.
Madame de Pompadour
As Paris du Verney had been the financial manager for Madame de Pompadour, and as he had been protected by her, a settled aversion was directed against him by all the members of the Royal family. The disasters of the Seven Years War had notably diminished the influence of the Marquise so that the École Militaire, considered as her work was regarded with an evil eye by the people of France. Nothing less than the official recognition of the school by the King’s visiting it in person, could lift it out of the disfavor into which it had fallen. But how could that indolent monarch be induced to honor the old financier
