Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence Volume I Part 18

Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence Volume I Part 18

?Beaumarchais sums up in a most _spirituelle_ manner the profound stupidity of the factum when he cries out, ?An ingenuous woman is announced to me and I am presented with a German publicist.?

?But if the memoir of Madame Go?zman is ridiculous in form, it is in matter of an extreme violence. ?My soul,? it is thus that Madame Go?zman begins, ?has been divided between astonishment, surprise, and horror in reading the libel of sieur Caron. The audacity of the author astonishes me, the number and atrocity of his impostures excite surprise, the idea he gives of himself fills me with horror.? When we remember that the honest lady who speaks has in her drawer the fifteen louis, whose reclamation excites the astonishment, surprise, and horror, one is inclined to excuse Beaumarchais for having permitted himself certain liberties of language.

It is very well known with what mixture of ironic politeness and pressing argumentation he refutes, irritates, embarra.s.ses, compliments, and confounds Madam Go?zman.

?Who has not burst into laughter on reading that excellent comic scene where he paints himself dialoguing with her before the registrar? The scene is so amusing that one would be tempted to take it for a picture drawn at fancy. This is not the case however....?

A few extracts from this comic scene will give the reader an idea of _la force de t?te_ of the pretty woman attempting to face so subtle an adversary as Beaumarchais.

?Confrontation of myself with Madame Go?zman.

?No one could imagine the difficulty we had to meet one another, Madame Go?zman and I. Whether she was really indisposed as many times as she sent word to the registrar, or whether she felt the need of preparation to sustain the shock of a meeting so serious as that with me, nevertheless we at last found ourselves facing each other.

?Madame Go?zman, summoned to state her reproaches if she has any to formulate against me, replied, ?Write that I reproach and _r?cuse_ monsieur because he is my capital enemy and because he has an atrocious soul, known for such in Paris, etc.? The phrase seemed a little masculine for a lady, but on seeing her fortify herself, leave her natural character, inflate her voice to utter these first injuries, I decided that she felt the need of beginning her attack by a vigorous period and so I did not mind her bad temper.

?Her reply was written verbatim and I was questioned in my turn. Here is my answer: ?I have no reproach to make against madame, not even for her little bad humor which dominates her at this moment; but many regrets to offer for the necessity of a criminal process in order to present to her my homage. As to the atrocity of my soul I hope to prove to her by the moderation of my replies and by my respectful conduct that her counsel has evilly informed her in my regard.?

?And it was written down. This is the general tone that prevailed during the eight hours that we pa.s.sed together the twice that we met.?

After several pages of this interrogation, Beaumarchais gives us, ?The Confrontation of Madame Go?zman With Me.? From which we give the following extracts:

?I took the liberty of saying, ?To-day, Madame, it is I who hold the attack, we shall first take up your interrogations.?

?I took the papers to run them over.

??What? This Monsieur here, has he the liberty to read all that I have been made to write??

??It is a right, Madame, which I shall use with all possible deference. In your first interrogation, for instance, to the sixteen consecutive questions upon the same subject, that is, to know whether you received one hundred louis from Le-Jay to procure an audience for le sieur Beaumarchais I see to the great honor of your discretion that the sixteen replies are not charged with any superfluous ornaments.

??Questioned as to whether you have received one hundred louis in two rolls??

?You reply, ?That is false.?

??If you put them in a case ornamented with flowers??

??That is not true.?

??If you kept them until the day after the suit??

??Atrocious lie.?

??If you did not promise an audience to Le-Jay for the same evening??

??Abominable calumny.?

??If you had not said to Le-Jay, money is not necessary, your word is sufficient??

??Diabolical invention,? etc., etc. Sixteen negations following one another in relation to the same subject.

?And yet you admit freely at the second interrogation that ?It is true that Le-Jay presented one hundred louis, that I put them away in an _armoire_ and kept them a day and a night, but simply to accommodate that poor Le-Jay, because he was a good man and did not realize the consequences, and because the money might make him tired in carrying it about.? (What goodness, the sums were in gold!)

??As these replies are absolutely contrary to the first, I beg you madame to be so good as to tell us which of the two interrogations you decide to hold to in this important matter??

??Neither to the one nor to the other, Monsieur, all that I said there means nothing, and I shall only hold to my verification which is the only thing that is true.? All this was written down.

??It must be admitted, Madame,? I said to her, ?that the method of recusing this your own testimony after having recused that of every one else would be the most convenient of all if it could only succeed. In waiting for the parliament to adopt it let us see what is said of the one hundred louis in your verification.?

?Madame Go?zman here a.s.sured us that she begged Le-Jay to take away the money with him and that when he was gone she was astonished to find it in a case decorated with flowers which was on the mantel piece. She sent three times during the day to that poor Le-Jay begging him to come and get his money, which he did not do until the day after.

??Observe, Madame, that in the first instance of all, you have rejected the one hundred louis with indignation, then put them aside with complaisance, while in the last case it is without your knowledge that they remained with you. Here are three narrations of the same act, what is the true version I beg you??

??I have said to you, Monsieur, that I shall hold to my verification,?

etc., etc., etc.?

Then comes the question of the fifteen louis: ?I begged her to be so good as to tell us clearly and without equivocation whether she had not required fifteen louis of Le-Jay for the secretary, and if she had not put them in the bureau when Le-Jay gave her the money.

??I replied clearly and without equivocation that Le-Jay never spoke to me of the fifteen louis, neither did he give them to me.?

??Observe, Madame, that there would be more merit in saying, ?I refused them,? than in maintaining that you know nothing about them.?

??I maintain, Monsieur, that no one ever spoke to me of them. Would there have been any sense of offering fifteen louis to a woman of my quality, after having refused a hundred the day before??

??The day before what, Madame??

??Eh, monsieur, the day before the day----? (she stopped suddenly and bit her lip.)

??The day before the day,? I said to her, ?on which no one ever spoke to you about the fifteen louis, _n?est-ce-pas?_?

??Stop this,? she said, rising furious to her feet, ?or I will give you a box on the ears. I?ve had enough of those fifteen louis! With all your despicable little _tournures de phrases_ you try to confuse me and make me blunder, but I tell you in truth that I shall not answer you another word.? And her fan a.s.suaged by redoubled strokes the fire which had mounted to her face.... She was like a lioness feeling that she had just escaped being taken.

?After Madame Go?zman came Bertrand who began with this epigram taken from the Psalms _?Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta, et ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me_.??

Beaumarchais avenged himself on _le grand_ Bertrand by indicting upon him the celebrity of ridicule. Here, as elsewhere, the shade of the physiognomies is perfectly grasped. It is in vain that Bertrand attempted to deal terrible blows, in vain that he committed to writing such phrases as, ?cynic orator; buffoon; brazen-faced sophist; unfaithful painter who draws from his own soul the filth with which he tarnishes the robe of innocence; evil, from necessity and from taste; his heart hard, implacable, vindictive; light-headed from his pa.s.sing triumph; and smothering without remorse human sensibility ...? instead of paying back anger for anger, Beaumarchais contented himself with painting his enemy.

He painted him talkative, shrewd for gain, undecided, timid, hot-headed, but more stupid than bad, in a word exactly as he showed himself in the four grotesque memoirs with which he has enriched this famous suit.

The fourth champion who precipitated himself upon Beaumarchais, the head lowered to pierce him through by the first blow, was a novelist of the time, amusing enough in a melancholy way, who prided himself as he said, upon having _l?embonpoint du sentiment_. It is d?Arnaud-Baculard, who, to be agreeable to the judge Go?zman, wrote a letter containing a false statement and who, after being very politely set right in the first memoir of Beaumarchais, replied in this style:

?Yes, I was on foot and I encountered in the rue de Cond?, the sieur Caron _en carrosse_--_dans son carrosse_,? and as Beaumarchais had said that d?Arnaud had a somber air, he grew indignant and cried, ?I had an air, not somber but penetrating. The somber air goes only with those who ruminate crime, who work to stifle remorse and to do evil--There are hearts in which I tremble to read, where I measure all the somber depths of h.e.l.l. It is then that I cry out, ?thou sleepest, Jupiter! for what purpose then hast thou thy thunderbolts???

?One sees,? said Lom?nie, ?that if d?Arnaud on his side was not _m?chant_, it was not from lack of will. The reply of Beaumarchais perhaps will be found interesting; there it will be seen with what justice he gave to each one his deserts, and what attractive serenity he brought into the combat.

He began by reproducing the phrase of d?Arnaud about the _carrosse_.

??_Dans son carrosse_,? you repeat with great point of admiration, who would not believe after that sad, ?yes I was on foot? and that great point of admiration which runs after my _carrosse_, that you were envy itself personified. But I, who know you to be a good man, I know that the phrase _dans son carrosse_, does not signify that you were sorry to see me in my _carrosse_, but only that you were sorry that I did not see you in yours.?

??But console yourself, Monsieur, the _carrosse_ in which I rode was already no more mine when you saw me in it. The Comte de la Blache already had seized it with all my other goods. Men called _? hautes armes_, with uniforms, bandoliers and menacing guns guarded it, as well as all my furniture; and to cause you, in spite of myself, the sorrow of seeing me in my _carrosse_ it was necessary that same day that I had that of demanding, my hat in one hand and a _gros ?cu_ in the other, the permission to use it, of that company of officers, which I did, _ne vous d?plaise_, every morning, and while I speak with such tranquillity the same distress reigns in my household.

??How unjust we are! We are jealous of and we hate such and such a one whom we believe happy, who would often give something over, to be in the place of the pedestrian who detests him because of his _carrosse_. I, for example: could anything be worse than my actual situation? But I am something like the cousin of H?loise, I have done my best to cry; the laugh has to escape from some corner. This is what makes me gentle with you. My philosophy is, to be, if I can, contented with myself and to let the rest go as it pleases G.o.d.?

?And at the end, after the honey comes the sting. ?Pardon, Monsieur, if I have not replied by an express writing to you alone, to answer all the injuries of your memoir, pardon, if, seeing you measure in my heart the somber depths of h.e.l.l, and, hearing you cry, ?_Tu dors, Jupiter; ? quoi te sert donc ta foudre?_? I have replied lightly to so much bombast. Pardon, you were a school boy, no doubt, and you remember that the best blown up balloon needs only the stick of a pin.??