"Diderot proposed to paint upon the scene the different duties of the social condition, the father of the family, the magistrate, the merchant, in order to show the virtues which each requires. It was certainly a new point of view which he offered to the public. Beaumarchais felt his heart deeply touched, and yielding to the impulse which he felt, he composed, almost in spite of himself, his touching _Eugénie_.
"This is the picture of a virtuous girl infamously seduced by a great lord. No piece ever offered a more severe morality, or more direct instruction to fathers of vain women, who allow themselves to be blinded by titles and great names. It is the duty of every author to attack the vices of his own century. This duty the Greeks first understood. But in France a thousand voices were raised against the innovation. Beaumarchais, whom nothing intimidated, dared in his first play to attack the vice so common among great lords, especially under Louis XV.
"Certainly this ought to have made him applauded by every friend of virtue. The opposite occurred. The friends kept silence. Those who were guilty of similar vice cried out against the play, their flatterers cried still louder, journalists and the envious authors hissed and cried out that it was detestable, scandalous, badly conceived and executed, immoral. Not one applauded the energetic audacity of the author who dared to raise his voice against the luxurious vice permitted by the monarchy and even by the magistrates. Beaumarchais, however, had the public on his side, the piece remained upon the stage and was constantly applauded."
Although the fastidious French taste, apart from all the enmity aroused by the many-sided success of its author, found much to criticise in the production, _Eugénie_, or _la Vertu malheureuse_, the piece retains its place upon the repertoire of the Théâtre-Français and is still occasionally given.
Outside France it met with a much warmer reception. The German writer, Bettleheim, assures us that it was at once translated into most of the Kultur-Sprachen of Europe and was produced in the principal theatres everywhere. In England, through the support of Garrick, then director of the Drury Lane theater, and in Austria, through that of Sonnenfels, it met with an astounding success.