"Your sincere friend P---- "February 11th, 1766--"
In the words of Loménie, "Let us accord this worthy cousin, whose sentences are more consoling than new, the justice which he claims, and acknowledge that he is a stranger to the perfidy of the Chevalier. If we were writing a romance we would stop here, or else end with the death of Beaumarchais, he killing himself in despair, or by the death of the Chevalier, immolated by the fury of his rival; but as we are writing a history we are obliged above all else to be exact and instead of stating that the adventure ends by a suicide or a duel we are forced to state that it terminates much more prosaically, by a _règlement de comptes_ where the future author of the _Mariage de Figaro_ makes an amusing enough figure in his rôle of betrayed lover and uneasy creditor."
There is, we must admit, an indefinable humor in the idea of the brilliant genius Beaumarchais, deserted by his Pauline, seating himself, _le coeur gros_, the tears of anger and mortification welling to his eyes, intent upon regulating, with the same minute exactitude that he showed in making the watch to be set as a jewel in a lady's ring, the account existing between him and Pauline.
As a matter of fact, he had been far less prudent in his generous advances of money than in the expression of his sentiments as a lover, for not only had he risked large sums on the Santo Domingo property, but he had been in the habit of advancing money both to Pauline and to her aunt without keeping any special count. To return to the account of Loménie, "He groups the capital with the interest and presents a bill of the most scrupulous rectitude. The Chevalier, who has no time to bother with such vile details, and who has gone to pass his honeymoon I don't know where, sends to Beaumarchais his older brother, the abbé du S----, respectable, but a little quick tempered, who not only quibbles over the bill, but permits himself sometimes to deepen a bleeding wound by opposing the lover to the creditor. From that come stormy discussions, of which the following letter of Beaumarchais to the abbé will serve as illustration.
"'I beg you to notice that I never have been lacking in politeness towards you, but that I owe nothing but contempt for him whom you represent, as I have had the honor of saying to you twenty times, and as I strongly would have desired to say to him if he had been as exact in showing himself as he has been clever in taking my place. The proof that Mlle. Le B---- wished well of me, of my affection, of my counsels, of my money, is that without your brother she would still make use of all my gifts which I lavished upon her as long as they were agreeable and useful to her. It is true that she bought my services very dear, since she owes to our affection for your brother the happiness of having married him, which she would not have done, if he had remained without knowing us in the place where he then vegetated. I do not understand the secret of the phrase about the apology, so I am dispensed with replying to it. I regret that he is absent, only because I would have the greatest pleasure to testify to him in person, what he can now only know through proxy. I shall not cease to prepare myself for atrocities and injustices by benevolent acts. It always has agreed with me very well to do good in the expectation of evil, and your counsel adds nothing to my disposition in that regard.