"'Since you admit that you have lost your temper with me, it would be out of place for me to reproach you with it. It is sufficient that you accuse yourself, for me not to hold any resentment.
"'I do not know why you have underlined the words, "your sister," in recalling to me that I said that it was in this way that I loved Mlle. Le B----. Does this irony fall back on her, on me, or on your brother? Just as you please, for that matter. Although the fate of Mlle. Le B---- interests me no longer, it would be out of place for me, in speaking of her, to use other terms than those which I have employed. It is not her that I blame; she is as you have said, young and without experience and although she has very little fortune, your brother has used well his experience and has made a good affair in marrying her.
"'Remember, I beg you, Monsieur l'abbé, that all which is addressed to him has nothing to do with you. It would be too humiliating for a man of your station to be suspected of having had any part in the perfidy of your brother in my regard; let him bear the blame, and do not take up those things which do not deserve to have a defender as honest as yourself.
The matter finally was adjusted and the account reduced to 24,441 livres, 4 sous, 4 deniers.
One would almost think that after making such important reductions the sum might have been rounded off by the omission of the 4 sous, 4 deniers. Not so Beaumarchais--the whole debt might go unpaid for he was not a man to make much trouble about that, but in any case, the matter must stand in its absolute exactitude. M. de Loménie terminates this interesting chapter of the life of Beaumarchais in the following manner: "And now I demand pardon of the shade of the charming Pauline, but it seems certain that this debt, recognized and accepted by her, was never paid. Not only do I find it amongst papers of a later date classed as almost hopeless debts, but the touching solicitude of the cashier Gudin, after the death of his master, for the least letter of Pauline, is sufficient to demonstrate that this too must be ranged amongst those debts recognized but not dissolved, where so many amiable women, poets, and great lords have left their traces in the papers of Beaumarchais. It is true that Pauline was left a widow a year after her marriage, and this misfortune no doubt spoiled the arrangement of her affairs--and I conclude that if the young and beautiful Creole left her debt unpaid, it must have been because the habitation of Santo Domingo was seized by the other creditors, or plundered by the blacks or swallowed up by an earthquake."