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CHAPTER IX Beaumarchais at For-l’Evêque—Letter to his Little Friend—Second Trial in the Suit Instituted Against Him by the Count de La Blache—Efforts to secure an Audience with the Reporter Goëzman—Second Judgment Rendered Against Beaumarchais—He Obtains his Liberty—Loudly Demands the Return of his Fifteen Louis 196 CHAPTER X The Goëzman Lawsuit—The Famous Memoirs of Beaumarchais 213 CHAPTER XI The Preparation of the Memoirs—Aid Rendered by Family and Friends—The Judgment—Beaumarchais blâme—Enters the Secret Service of the King—Gudin Relates the Circumstances of the Meeting between the Civilly Degraded Man and Her Who Became His Third Wife—The Père Caron’s Third Marriage 235 CHAPTER XII Beaumarchais Goes to London in Quality of Secret Agent of Louis XV—Theveneau de Morande and His Gazetier Cuirassé—

The King Dies—Beaumarchais’s Second Mission Under Louis XVI—Playing Figaro upon the Stage of Life—Visits the Empress of Austria—Is Imprisoned at Vienna—Addresses Memoir to the King—Confers with the Ministers upon the Recall of the Parliaments

248 CHAPTER XIII The Character of Figaro—The First Performance of Le Barbier de Séville—Its Success after Failure—Beaumarchais’s Innovation at the Closing of the Theatre—His First Request for an Exact Account from the Actors—Barbier de Séville at the Petit-Trianon 269 CHAPTER XIV Beaumarchais Undertakes to Protect the Rights of Dramatic Authors—Lawsuit with the Comédie-Française—Founder of the First Society of Dramatic Authors—Jealousies Among Themselves Retard Success—National Assembly Grants Decree 1791—Final Form Given by Napoleon 286

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

THE primary cause of discontent among the American colonies, which led to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, was the proclamation by the King of England after the evacuation of America by the French in 1763, forbidding the colonists to extend their settlements west of the Alleghenies.