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ther to ruin a man of such noto-One of the most difficult points
riously bad credit, summoned Beau
marchais to the Maupeou parlia
ment. Beaumarchais was now forced
to prove that the fifteen louis had
been accepted and kept, on penalty
in case of failure of being branded
by the hangman, and suffering any
punishment his judges chose to in-
flict citra mortem. Had things
come to this pass, Beaumarchais
had resolved upon suicide; so that
he had, indeed, staked his life on
the issue.
mod prolf
Beaumarchais now having to
plead in a matter of life and death,
with the usual audacity of his char
acter, ventured upon a method of
defence such as never was adopted
before. He pleaded his cause, not
so much to the corrupt judges who
had to pass sentence upon him, as
to the public; he was the first
man in France who dared to court
public opinion and solicit it as
an ally. He threw aside all the
old rules of secrecy in criminal
matters, and pleaded boldly from
the sellette of the accused to the
whole nation, by means of printed
pleadings. But to catch the atten-
tion of the light Parisian public of
those times he must both interest
and amuse; manda under pain of
death, as it were, he did display
such a combination of talent as no
other man ever possessed but him-
self. If he had been merely elo-
quent, indignant, and declamatory,
he had been lost; but he had to
rouse the public apathy into under-
standing that his cause was their
own; he had to destroy prejudice
and to enlist sympathy, with the
imperative necessity of being, above
all things, amusing. He had to
make all the details of his cause
intelligible to the

with which Beaumarchais had to
deal was the vindication of himself
from having paid the money to
Madame Goezman with intention to
bribe for this was an avowal of
his own criminality; but he said,
"I paid the money, note with was
hope of influencing the opinion of
the judges, but to get an audience,
and for no other purpose whatever,
and that not till it was demanded
of me e repeatedly. I made twenty-
two useless attempts to see the
judge whose duty it was to see me,
and the twenty-third attempt was
successful because money was paid."
Such a defence, however available
before the public, was less so before
his judges, who, for the honour of
their corps,naturally would feel
resentment at the confidence such
a proceeding implied in their ve
nality. vtred:

The sum of fifteen lonis was the very key and pivot of the whole business for if Madame Goezman,! as her story was, rejected Beaumarchais's advances with indignation, how came she to keep the fifteen louis? If the small sum had such charms, was it likely the larger had been rejected? Hence nothing is more diverting than the attempts Beaumarchais describes in his 'Mémoires' to induce himoito lose sight of these fifteen louis; because, the fifteen louiswdisposed of, all the onus of proof of the whole transaction lay on Beaumarchais Friend Marin, editor of the 'Gazette de France,' and general colporteur of libel and blasphemy, came as a mediator from the Goez mans to tender suppression of all mention soforces miserables quinze louis, and that then the matter

17

2

only method ofblic and the might be arranged; but as Beau

gaining sufficient attention for this purpose was to give all the interest of a novel or a comedy to matters of business and legal procedure to enliven fall with the most brilliant wit and the most sprightly humour, or he had in perspective omnia citra mortem.

marchais says, in Rabelaisian tone,
"Cette manoeuvre était le joli petit
coutelet avec lequel l'ami Marin
entendait tout doucettement m'en-
gorgiller" Beaumarchais was ea
lost man himself if these miserables.
quinze louis were once lost sight of.
Friend Marin, who would be saf

own adversary in a criminal prose
cution to lead her to her carriage:
all idea of courts of justice has
vanished from the light female
head. But the grave court regis-
trar interferes, cannot permit such
delicate attentions between parties
at such deadly feud in the eyes of
the law-between the wife of a
judge and a possible felon." Well,
Madame," says Beaumarchais, with
a bow,
not the
atrocious rascal I have been des-
cribed to be." "Mais vous êtes,
au moins un peu malin." The
triumph of having extracted these
last words from Madame Goezman
has something so exquisitely comic
about it, that Beaumarchais at that
particular moment must have
thought himself repaid for all his
persecutions.

knaves; but the former is the stupid malignant, the latter the stupid selfish knave.

was

But these Mémoires' would never have had such success had they been simply amusing comic sketches: these sketches are simply introduced in their place to gain the attention of the reader, and get him to take interest in the more serious pas sages, where every kind of oratorical artifice and power is enlisted in the same cause. There are passages of the highest beauty when judged by the standard of the highest flights of oratory; models of dignified accu sation, of insinuated insult, of sar castic brevity, of the most polished irony, of the most piercing indignation, and impassioned appeals to the i noblest feelings and passions of human nature. They are the only But her morals and logic were law-pleadings, we should imagine, in quite in keeping. Je saurais bien the history of the world which have plumer la poule sans la faire crier," become classic literature and popushe cried out in company. And lar: at the present day they are when poor Le Jay was troubled in reprinted and read among the worksoul at having deposed that he men of France, but at the time of knew nothing of the fifteen louis, she their publication the success consoled him with, "We will have enormous. Beaumarchais had be to-morrow a mass said au Saint come a famous character before, the o Esprit, and all will be right. It fourth Mémoire' appeared, of which f was agreed I might keep the fifteen the malignant Marin complained louis, and t therefore you can say I that 10,000 copies were sold in two never had them." Her conversa-days. The salons talked of nothing tion, too, at times, is strewed with else but Beaumarchais and his fifrugged law terms, prompted by Goez- teen louis, and the foreign papers man, who cannot see the incon- teemed with news of the trial. The gruity of trusting this light-headed portraits of Madame Goezman and creature with such heavy weapons her incorruptible husband even of fence. "Grands Dieux," says made the blasé and indolent Louis laugh; Madame du Barri had Madame Goezman played on a private stage at her receptions. In none of the sallies of Beaumarchais against Marin he played with one of his adversary's Provençal expressions, "quesaco," qu'est ce que cela? Marie Antoinette, then a charming and sprightly gay dauphine, seized on the word, and made pretty mocking retorts with it: the word was taken up and became famous. Milliners made new head-dresses à la quesaco, and plumes à la quesaco were nodding everywhere. Maupeou, how

Beaumarchais, ne "l'on m'annonce une femme ingenue, et l'on m'op pose un publiciste Allemande," ong Every one of Beaumarchais's antagonists is thus created into a comic type: we have Goezman the incorruptible, Baculard d'Arnaud the fiercely sentimental, and Le Jay the weakly honest. All his antagonists become serio-comic personages; and Beaumarchais, with a true dramatist's skill, brings out the peculiar features of each in a very decided way: thus Marin and Bertrand d'Airolles are both stupid