“_I know very well to live is to combat, and perhaps I should be
afflicted at this if I did not know that in return to combat is to
live._”
_Caron de Beaumarchais._
“_—Often broken-hearted, always consoled by the sublime principle of the
compensation of good and evil—which was the ground of his optimism ..._”
_Lintilhac in Beaumarchais et Ses Œuvres._
House of Beaumarchais Searched—The 10th of August—Letter to his
Family in Havre—Letter of Eugénie to her Father—Commissioned to
Buy Guns for the Government—Goes to Holland as Agent of _Comité
de Salut Public_—Declared an Emigré—Confiscation of his
Goods—Imprisonment of his Family—The Ninth Thermidor Comes to
Save Them—Life During the Terror—Julie again in
Evidence—Beaumarchais’s Name Erased From List of Emigrés—Returns
to France.
Early in 1792, Beaumarchais embarked in a new political and commercial
operation which, says Loménie, “was destined to embarrass his fortune
and to be the torment of his latter days. France was without arms and he
undertook to procure them for her. It is difficult to understand that a
man sixty years old, rich, fatigued by a most stormy existence,
afflicted with increasing deafness, surrounded with enemies, and
desirous only of repose should have allowed himself to be induced to
attempt to bring into France sixty thousand guns detained in Holland
under circumstances which rendered this operation as dangerous as it was
difficult.”
However, Gudin tells us, “he had only the choice of dangers. To have
refused to procure the arms would have marked him for disfavor. He
therefore chose the danger of being useful to his country. This
resolution exposed him to the risk of being pillaged and assassinated,
but in the end it saved his life.... During the days of frenzy which
preceded the overthrowing of the throne, the most hostile menaces
sounded around his house.”
The populace insisted that he had stored it with wheat and guns. In vain
Beaumarchais protested, in vain he placarded the walls of his garden
with official statements proving that the house had been searched and
that nothing had been found. The fury of the mob was not to be appeased.
Finally on the 8th of August, the threatenings became so ominous that he
was persuaded to spend the night in the home of a friend, who had sought
safety outside Paris, leaving an old domestic alone in charge.
Beaumarchais says:
“At midnight the valet, frightened, came to the room where I was,
‘Monsieur,’ he said to me, ‘get up, the people are searching for you,
they are beating the doors down, someone has turned traitor, the house
will be pillaged.’ ... The frightened man hid in a closet while the mob
searched the house.” When morning came, he returned to his own home,
around which the threatenings still continued without ceasing.
Gudin says: “He received the most alarming notices, and the day after
the imprisonment of the king, August 10th, a great multitude set out in
the direction of his house, threatening to break down the iron gates if
they were not immediately opened. I and two other persons were with him.
“At first his desire was to open the doors and to speak to the
multitude. But persuaded that secret enemies conducted the crowd, and
that he would be assassinated before he could open his mouth, we induced
him to leave the house by a side entrance.... As we were but four we
decided to separate in the hope of deceiving those who sought him....
“Whatever the cause, once admitted and masters of the situation, someone
proposed to swear that they would destroy nothing. The populace swore
and kept its word. Always extreme, it even swore to hang anyone who
stole anything. It visited the whole house, the closets, the granaries,
the cellars, and the apartments of the women and my own. They wished to
hang my own domestic, who seeing the crowd, ran from room to room with
some of my silver hidden in her pocket; they thought she was stealing,
and she was forced to call in the other domestics as witnesses. They
searched everywhere and found only the gun, hunting case, and sword of
the master of the house, these they did not disturb.
“Thirsty from excitement and fatigue, that breathless troop, instead of
opening a cask of wine, satisfied itself with water from the fountain.
They even left the master’s watch hanging at the head of his bed, and
other articles of jewelry about the rooms.... A troup conducted by a
magistrate would not have been more exact in its perquisition, or more
circumspect in its conduct.
“Truth here resembles fable,—something extraordinary always mingled
itself with the events which came to Beaumarchais. This conduct of the
populace was the fruit of the benefits which he had poured upon the poor
of his neighborhood. If he had not been loved, if he had not been dear
to his domestics, all his goods would have been dissipated by pillage.”
The next day Beaumarchais wrote to his daughter in Havre:
“August 12, 1792.
“ ... My thoughts turned upon thy mother, and thee and my poor
sisters. I said with a sigh, ‘My child is safe; my age is
advanced; my life is worth very little and this would not
accelerate the death by nature but by a few years. But my
daughter! Her mother! They are safe? Tears flowed from my eyes.
Consoled by this thought I occupied myself with the last term of
life, believing it very near. Then, my head hollow through so
much contending emotion, I tried to harden myself and to think of
nothing. I watched mechanically the men come and go; I said, ‘The
moment approaches,’ but I thought of it as a man exhausted, whose
ideas begin to wander, because for four hours I had been standing
in this state of violent emotion which changed into one like
death. Then feeling faint, I seated myself on a bank and awaited
my fate, without being otherwise alarmed.”
“When the crowd had retired,” says Gudin in his narrative, “Beaumarchais
returned and dined in his home, more astonished to find all undisturbed
than he would have been to have seen the whole devastated....”
“And so we continued to live alone in that great habitation, occupied in
meditating on the misfortunes of the state and sometimes upon those
which menaced us....
“On the 23rd of August, upon awakening I perceived armed men in the
streets, sentinels at the doors and under the windows. I hastened to the
apartment of my friend—I found him surrounded by sinister men occupied
in searching his papers and putting his effects under seal. Tranquil in
the midst of them, he directed their operations. When they were through,
they took him with them and I was left alone in that vast palace,
guarded by _sans culottes_ whose aspect made me doubt whether they were
there to conserve the property, or to give the signal for pillage.”
Beaumarchais had been carried off to the _mairie_ (police court) “where
he defended himself so perfectly,” continues Gudin, “that his denouncers
were confounded and about to liberate him when Marat denounced him
anew.... He was sent to l’Abbaye along with others whose virtues were a
title of proscription.
“At the end of a week his name was called. General consternation in the
prison.
“‘You are called for.’
“‘By whom?’
“‘M. Manuel. Is he your enemy?’
“‘I never saw him.’ Beaumarchais went out. All the assembly sat silent.
“‘Who is M. Manuel?’ demanded Beaumarchais.
“‘I am he. I come to save you. Your denouncer, Colmar, is declared
culpable—he is in prison—you are free.’ ...
“Two days later came the September massacres. And thus a second time his
life was saved. ‘Long afterwards he learned that a woman to whom he had
rendered an eminent service had solicited Manuel to obtain the liberty
of her benefactor.’” (_Gudin_, p. 430.)
“It would seem natural,” says M. de Loménie, “that in such a moment, the
author of the _Mariage de Figaro_ would consent to set aside the matter
of the guns and occupy himself with his own personal safety.”
He consented, however, to hide himself during the day outside Paris, but
every night he returned on foot by byways and across ploughed fields, to
urge the ministers to make good the promises of their predecessors and
make it possible for him to obtain the sixty-thousand guns from Holland
which he had promised the nation.
“The fact was,” says Loménie, “that on the one hand, until those guns
were delivered, he remained an object of suspicion to the people, while
on the other he believed that the minister Lebrun was trying to exploit
the matter to his own credit while leaving to Beaumarchais, if
necessary, all the responsibility of failure. This was what rendered him
so tenacious, that he tormented even Danton who, by the way, could not
help laughing to see a man so badly compromised who should be thinking
only of his safety, obstinately returning every night to demand the
money which had been promised as a deposit, and to obtain a commission
for Holland.”
Finally Lebrun consented to give the author of the _Mariage de Figaro_ a
passport to Holland and promised to have the necessary money ready for
him at Havre.
“He set out,” says Lintilhac, “on the 22nd of September, 1792, with
Gudin, directing himself toward Havre, where, after so many emotions, he
wished to press his wife and his daughter in his arms. From there, he
passed to England where he was arrested, imprisoned, then set free. As
soon as Madame de Beaumarchais knew that her husband was safe, she
returned to Paris to be nearer, so as to defend his interests. A noble
task which she accomplished at the peril of her life.
“The departure of Beaumarchais, the motive of which remained a secret,
emboldened his enemies who renewed their accusations. The 28th of
November a second decree was rendered against him as suspected.
Immediately seals were placed upon all the houses which he owned in
Paris. Madame de Beaumarchais hastened to protest the accusations
against her husband and against the placing of the seals. With great
difficulty she finally obtained a decree dated February 10, 1793, which
accorded to her husband a delay of two months to present his defense and
at the same time the immediate removal of the seals. He wrote from
London, December 9, 1792, to his family:
“‘My poor wife and thou, my dear daughter. I do not know where
you are, nor where to write to you, neither by whom to give you
news. Still I learn by the gazette that seals have been placed
for the third time on my property and that I am decreed, accused
for this miserable affair of the guns of Holland.... Be calm, my
wife and my sisters. Dry thy tears, my sweet and tender child!
they trouble the tranquillity of which thy father has need to
enlighten the National Convention upon grave subjects which it is
important it should know.’”
Beaumarchais returned immediately to France, drew up a memoir for his
justification, secured the removal of the seals at Paris; but the
municipality of Strausborg maintained those which it had imposed.
Beaumarchais grew impatient, addressed a petition to the minister of the
interior who sent a dispatch to the administrator of that department of
the Bas-Rhein. Again, the author of the _Mariage de Figaro_ is
vindicated and absolved.
The troubles of Beaumarchais showed no signs of diminishing either in
number or perplexity. In the month of January, 1793, the English
government, having joined the coalition against France, was on the point
of herself taking possession of the sixty-thousand guns for which
Beaumarchais had so long been negotiating.
“He, however,” says Loménie, “did not lose his head, having already had
wind of the project. At the very time when he was imprisoned in London
he had induced an English merchant ... by means of a large commission
... to become the purchaser of those same guns and to maintain them in
his name at Tervère as English property, until the real owner could
dispose of them. But the fictitious owner could not hold them long,
because the English ministers said to him, ‘Either you are the real
owner or you are not; if you are, we are ready to pay for them; if you
are not, we intend to confiscate them.’ ...
“The English merchant remaining faithful to the engagement with
Beaumarchais, resisted; affirmed the guns to be his property, invoked
his right to dispose of them as he pleased, and this respect for law
which distinguishes the English Government above all other governments,
left the question undecided. The guns remained at Tervère under guard of
an English battleship.” (_Loménie_, Vol. II, p. 424.)
“Things were at this pass when the committee of public safety informed
Beaumarchais that he must secure the arms, or else prevent their falling
into the hands of the English; failing which his family and goods in
default of his person would answer for the success of the operation.”
And so, early in June, 1793, again he left France on this most difficult
mission.
“To enter into all the details of his interminable _tours et détours_,
going from Amsterdam to Basle, from Basle to Hamburg, from Hamburg to
London ... all which he directed like a very ingenious _intrigue de
comédie_ ... would be too long. He was able to keep the guns at Tervère
and when the moment seemed to him favorable, he supplicated the
committee of public safety with loud cries, to order the General
Pichegru to come and carry off the guns; but the committee absorbed by a
thousand things made no reply.... The only missive he ever received
from them was the following, dated, _5 pluviose, An II_ (January 26,
1794), written by Robert Lindet, ‘You must be quick, do not await
events. If you defer too long, your service will not be appreciated.
Great returns are necessary and they must be prompt. It is of no use to
calculate the difficulties, we consider only results and success.’”
“Not only,” continues Loménie, “did the Committee abandon Beaumarchais
to himself, but with a thoughtlessness which is another sign of the
times, they allowed their agent to be put upon the lists as an _émigré_,
which act entailed the confiscation of his property.
“Madame de Beaumarchais went at once to the committee of public safety,
explained that her husband was _not_ an _émigré_, since he had left the
territory of the republic because of an official mission, and provided
with a regular passport, and her proof in her hand, she succeeded in
having the decree withdrawn and the seals removed from the property.
Beaumarchais had at this time taken refuge in Hamburg.
“He found himself,” says Loménie, “in the most cruel situation both
materially and morally. He knew that the revolutionary tribunal was
fixed permanently at Paris, that it struck without pity mothers, wives,
and daughters of the absent ones, and that the bloody knife never ceased
to fall. The unfortunate man was in torture. Eugénie tried to comfort
her father in the unconscious tranquillity of a young girl. Every
precaution had been taken to hide from her the horrible tragedy which
was being enacted about her; she presented a striking contrast with the
terrible reality of the times.
“She walked alone and melancholy in the lovely garden, while the dismal
car passed along the terrace perhaps. But in her sad dreaming, she did
not turn her head; she admired the earliest advances of spring. On March
11th, she wrote to her father,
“‘The verdure of our trees is beginning to appear, the leaves develop
from day to day, and flowers already beautify thy garden. It would be
very lovely, if we could walk here with thee. Thy presence would add a
charm to everything which surrounds us. There is no happiness for me but
what thou partakest in. We are only happy through thee, oh my tender
father!’”
The very next day measures were taken which ended in the annulling of
the decree rendered by the _comité de salut public_ in which the _comité
de sûreté générale_, which had taken its place, once more declared
Beaumarchais to be an _émigré_, replaced the seals upon his property,
confiscated his revenues and on the 5th of July, 1794, arrested his
wife, his two sisters, and his daughter.
They were shut up in the convent of Port-Royal which had been changed
into a prison and which, says Loménie, “by an atrocious irony was called
_Port-Libre_, where they waited their turn to mount the fatal cart that
should conduct them to the guillotine.” The ninth _thermidore_ came to
put an end to these butcheries. Eleven days later, another decree of the
_comité de sûreté générale_, again established, gave to the _Citoyennes_
Caron their liberty.
During this frightful period of the terror, Beaumarchais, still at
Hamburg, deprived of all communication with his family, was a prey to
the most terrible mental agony. His correspondence shows that he had
moments of the deepest despair when he asked himself if he were not
losing his mind.
“Where shall I address thee?” he wrote his wife. “Under what name? What
shall I call thee? Who are thy friends? Whom can I consider mine? Ah,
without the hope of saving my daughter, the atrocious guillotine would
be sweeter to me than my horrible condition.”
It was at this period that the following address to the American people
was written.
“Americans: Though I have served you with an indefatigable zeal,
I have in my life received only bitterness for recompense, and I
die your creditor. Permit then in dying that I will to my
daughter the debt which you owe me. Perhaps after I am gone,
other injustices, from which I cannot defend myself, will rob me
of all I possess so nothing will be left for her, and perhaps
Providence has ordained by your delay in paying me, that through
you she will be spared absolute want. Adopt her as a worthy child
of the state. Her mother, equally unfortunate, and my widow, will
conduct her to you. Let her be looked upon as the daughter of a
citizen! But if after these last efforts, if after all has been
said, I must still feel that you will reject my demands—If I am
to fear that you will refuse her arbitrators; at last, desperate,
ruined in Europe as well as by you, your country being the only
one in which I could beg without shame—what would remain for me
to do, but to supplicate Heaven to give me the strength to take
the voyage to America?
“Arrived in your midst, mind and body weakened, unable to
maintain my rights, should I there be forced, my proofs in my
hand, to have myself carried to the doors of your National
Assembly, and, holding aloft the cap of liberty, with which I
helped as much as anyone to adorn your heads—to cry out ‘Give an
alms to your friend, whose accumulated services have only had
this recompense, _date obolum Belisario_!’
“Pierre-Augustin Caron Beaumarchais.”
It was precisely to save her daughter, that Madame de Beaumarchais had
broken all communication with her husband, retaken her family name and
thought only of making herself forgotten.
“The Revolutionary laws,” says Gudin, “ordained the divorce of the wives
of _émigrés_, under pain of being suspected and of running the risk of
death that could not be inflicted upon their husbands. Madame de
Beaumarchais, worthy of the courageous man whose hand she had received,
went to the Revolutionary Committee and with that firmness which
inspired respect and that grace which embellished every action, said,
‘Your decrees oblige me to demand a divorce. I obey, although my
husband, charged with a commission is not an _émigré_ and never had the
thought: I attest it and I know his heart. He will justify himself of
this accusation, as he has of all the rest, and I shall have the
satisfaction of marrying him a second time, according to your new
laws.’”
“Such was the effect of his destiny,” observes this eighteenth century
philosopher, “that he was obliged to renew the knot of his own marriage
at the same time that he occupied himself with the marriage of his
daughter.”
The condition of the family of Beaumarchais when they found themselves
once more free, was far from enviable. Their revenues had been seized
and their beautiful home was ordered to be sold. Eugénie felt only
horror for the place and persuaded her mother to live in a small house.
Gudin had gone into the country and Julie, the faithful sister of
Beaumarchais, went to live alone with an old servant in the deserted
palace of her brother, which was now guarded by agents of the Republic
and which bore written upon its walls, “_Propriété nationale_.”
“If, as I hope,” says Loménie, “the reader has retained an agreeable
impression of Julie, it will be a pleasure perhaps to see again that
intelligent, merry, courageous face which neither age, privations, nor
dangers had been able to change.
“A picture of the domestic and inner life of three women, once rich,
forced to face the difficulties of a fearful epoch will give details of
interest to that period which history itself cannot furnish.
“During the time when the head of the household was proscribed, it was
Madame Beaumarchais, a person of rare merit who joined to all feminine
graces a truly virile energy of character, who bore the weight of the
situation and while working on one hand to prevent the sale of her
husband’s property, tried on the other, to have his name erased from the
fatal list; and all the time was obliged to provide for her family with
what she had been able to save from the wreck of their fortune. On her
side Julie guarded the house of her brother, kept her sister-in-law in
touch with events at the house, and urged her to resistance in the
animated and original tone which characterised her.
“‘Morbleu! my child,’ she wrote her after the Terror, ‘let us quickly
get the decree suppressed. Even the fruits, the same as last year, are
requisitioned; the cherries being ripe, they are to be picked to-morrow
and sold, and the rest as it ripens, and then close the garden to the
profane and the gluttons! Isn’t it sweet to have lived here alone for
six months, and only be allowed to eat the stones of the fruit? And even
they are sold with the rest. It is for the birds that I am sorry ...
nevertheless, it is a pity that the agency had to interfere this year;
... See if thou cannot prevent this brigandage by a firm protest at the
agency....
“‘And here a pound of veal has been brought me which costs twenty-eight
francs, and at even that it is a bargain, for it might sell for thirty.
Rage! Fury! Malediction! One cannot even live by ruining oneself and
devouring three times one’s fortune. How happy those who have gone
before! They feel neither the confusion in my head, nor my eye which
weeps, nor the flame which devours me, nor my tooth which sharpens
itself to eat twenty-eight francs worth of veal; they feel none of these
evils.’
“Those twenty-eight francs worth of veal, which Julie consumed with
humorous anger, bring us to say a word of the curious state of want
which was produced by the constant depreciation of paper money after the
Terror. It is still Julie who informs us how people lived at that time;
her sister-in-law had just given her four thousand francs in paper money
and she returned an account of the use to which she put them that
December 1794.
“‘When you gave me those four thousand francs, my good friend, my heart
beat fast. I thought you suddenly had lost your reason to give me such a
fortune; I slipped them quickly into my pocket and spoke of other
things, so that you would forget them.
“‘Returned home and quick, some wood, some provisions, before the prices
go higher! And see Dupont (the old servant) who runs, exhausts herself!
And lo, the scales fall from my eyes when I see the result of four
thousand, two hundred, and seventy-five francs.
“‘One load of wood 1,460 fr.
Nine pounds of candles 900
Four pounds of sugar 400
Three litrons (six qts.), of grain 120
Seven pounds of oil 700
A dozen wicks 60
A bushel and a half potatoes 300
Laundry bill for one month 215
One pound of powder for the hair 70
Three ounces of pomade (that used to be
three sous) 50
_________
4,275 fr.
Over and above this is the provision for
the month, butter, eggs, at 100 francs,
as you know, and meat from 25 to 30
francs a pound and all else in
proportion 576
Bread, there has been none for two days;
we only get it every other day—for the
last ten days I have only bought 4
pounds at 45 fr. 180
_________
5,022 fr.
“‘When I think of this royal expenditure which costs me from eighteen to
twenty thousand francs without allowing myself the least luxury,
_J’envoie au diable le régime_.’
“Shortly after this the value of paper money decreased still more and
the price of commodities increased in alarming proportion. In another
letter to her sister-in-law Julie gave the following details:
“‘Ten thousand francs which I have scattered in the last two weeks, give
me such a fright, seize me with such pity that I no longer know how to
count my income. In the last three days, wood has risen from 4,200
francs to 6,500 and all the costs of transporting and piling are in
proportion, so that my load of wood has cost me 7,100 francs. Every week
it costs from 700 to 800 francs for a _pot-au-feu_, and other meat
without counting butter, eggs, and a thousand other details; laundry
work has increased so that 8,000 francs are not enough for one month.
All this makes me impatient and I solemnly affirm that I have not for
two years allowed myself a luxury, or gratified a single whim, or made
any other expenditures but for the house; nevertheless the needs I have
are urgent enough to make me need potfulls of money.’
“But if the sister of Beaumarchais is at the point of famine, the wife
and the daughter are no better off; I see in the correspondence of
Madame de Beaumarchais that one of her friends went the rounds of the
neighborhood to try to obtain some bread which was becoming rarer than
diamonds; ‘I am told,’ she wrote, the 5th of June 1795, ‘that at Briare,
flour is to be had, if that is true I will make a bargain with some
country man and send it direct to you by the barge which goes from
Briare to Paris, but that will greatly increase the cost. Please tell me
what you think, while waiting I still hope to get hold of a small loaf
somewhere. Oh, if I had the gift of miracles, I would send you, not
manna from heaven—but good bread and very white!’
“When Beaumarchais in exile, learned all the deprivations from which his
family suffered he learned also that they had sufficient moral courage
to support them. Gaiety had not wholly disappeared from that interior
which used to be so joyous; even if exposed to starvation, the frightful
guillotine no longer operated and one began to breathe more freely.”
One of his old friends wrote to him, “See now the soup tureen of the
family arrive, that is to say, upon the mahogany table (there is no such
thing as a cloth) is a plate of beans, two potatoes, a carafe of wine,
with very much water. Thy daughter asks for a white poodle to use as a
napkin and clean the plates—but no matter, come, come; if we have
nothing to eat we have plenty to laugh about. Come, I tell thee, for
thy wife needs a miller since thy _salon_ is decorated with a flour
mill; while thy Eugénie charms thee upon her piano, thou wilt prepare
her breakfast, while thy wife knits thy stockings, and thy future
son-in-law turns baker; for here everyone has his trade and that is why
our cows are so well guarded.
“It is too droll to see our women, without perruque in the morning,
filling each one her occupation, because you must know that each one of
us is at their service and because in our _régime_, if there are no
masters, there are at least valets. This letter costs thee at least a
hundred francs counting the paper, pens, the oil of the lamp, because
for economy’s sake I came to thy house to write it. We embrace thee with
all our hearts.”
And his faithful Gudin wrote him, though in much more somber strain,
from his retreat in the country: “My most ardent desire, my friend, is
to see you again and to press you to my heart; but circumstances are
such that I had to leave Paris where I could no longer subsist. I have
taken refuge in a little hamlet fifty miles away, where there are
thirteen peasant cabins. The house which I inhabit was a tiny priory,
occupied once by a single monk.” And after a very long and profoundly
pessimistic discourse upon the sad condition of affairs which he likens
to the barbarity which formerly engulfed Greece and Egypt and Assyria,
Sicily, and Italy, he terminates thus:
“Adieu my good friend, I would have wished to have talked to you of
yourself, of your family, of those whom you love, the regrets which we
feel to meet no more together. Our hearts like your own, are crushed
with sorrow.... I embrace you and sigh for the happy moment that will
unite us.
“Gudin.”
[Illustration: MADAME DE BEAUMARCHAIS]
Now that his anxieties for his family were allayed, Beaumarchais was
not idle, for his stay in Hamburg was occupied in drawing up memoirs
upon matters of public utility, in commercial negotiations, and in
agreeable companionships with distinguished _émigrés_ who like himself
were anxiously awaiting the moment when they could return to France.
As for Beaumarchais, the affair of the 60,000 guns had ended,
distressingly enough for his coffers, by the English carrying them off.
They consented, however, at the urgent request of the merchant friend,
to pay an arbitrary sum which was, however, far below their real value,
but saved Beaumarchais from complete ruin. The affair ended, his only
desire was to return home. This he was prevented from doing because of
the proscription unjustly continued against him, which all the efforts
of his friends and his family had been as yet unable to have removed.
Finally a member of the committee which he was serving, the same Robert
Lindet before mentioned, wrote in his behalf to the minister of police,
Cochon, the following letter:
“You have asked me to enlighten you regarding the second mission
of Citizen Beaumarchais, and upon the exact time when that
mission ended or should end.
“In charging the Citizen Beaumarchais with a mission, the
committee of public safety proposed to itself two objects. The
first was to procure the 60,000 guns deposited in the armory at
Tervère, as objects of commerce; the second was to prevent these
guns from falling into the power of the enemy.
“The Committee was obliged to pay for them only at the agreed
price on condition that they should be delivered and placed at
their disposition in one of the ports of the Republic, within
five or six months, The negotiation might take longer, but these
terms were used to excite the zeal of the Citizen Beaumarchais.
“Before the expiration of the term he sent from Holland to Paris,
the Citizen Durand, his friend, who had accompanied him on his
journey, to give an account of the obstacles which delayed the
execution of the enterprise and to propose measures which he
thought were needful.
“Citizen Durand was sent back to Citizen Beaumarchais with a
revised passport, which ran thus; ‘to conduct him to his
destination and to continue his mission;’ because it seemed
important to procure the guns for the government at whatever time
that should be found possible, and also that the enemy should be
prevented from seizing and distributing them in Belgium among the
partisans of the house of Austria.
“The department of Paris placed the Citizen Beaumarchais upon the
list of _émigrés_ and placed seals upon his property.
“The committee decreed that since the Citizen Beaumarchais was on
a mission he should not be treated as an _émigré_, because he was
absent on a mission for the government. The department removed
the seals.
“Some time after, the citizen Beaumarchais was replaced on the
list of _émigrés_. There had been no new motive. The mission was
not finished, his negotiations continued to be useful, he had not
been recalled.... However, they persisted in considering him an
_émigré_!... the presence of citizen Beaumarchais in a foreign
country was necessary up to the moment when the secret of his
mission having been divulged, the English carried off the guns
from the armory at Tervère to their ports, which they did last
year.
“Nothing would then have prevented citizen Beaumarchais from
returning to France because he could no longer hope to be able
to fulfil his mission; but his name still rested on the list of
_émigrés_ and he could not return until it was erased.
“It was an injustice ever to have placed it upon the list of
_émigrés_, since he was absent for the service of the Republic.
“Robert Lindet.”
“To the Minister of Police.”
This letter and the ardent solicitations of the wife and friends of the
proscribed man, finally induced the committee to have his name erased
from the list of _émigrés_, and so after three years of absence the
author of the _Mariage de Figaro_ was able to return to his native land.