"But this is not all his life at the Capital. In the midst of his industrial enterprises and his aristocratic pleasures, the future author of the _Barbier de Séville_ appears to be continually occupied with his humble family, now displaying a rare tact and without compromising his patrician bearing to force great ladies at Madrid to pay the bills which they had long owed the elder Caron; and with fraternal bonhomie, entering into all the details of the life of his sisters at home, or leaving the salons of the Capital for the modest dwelling of his sisters at Madrid."
That he was not ashamed of their station in life is admirably shown by the following letter addressed to his father. He wrote: "I have seen Drouillet (a French banker established in Madrid). He and his wife called soon after my arrival, but I have not entered into their society although Drouillet is himself an estimable man. The reason I have kept away is the ridiculous airs of his wife, who because she possesses a few more _écus_ than your daughters considers herself above them. She has tried to attract me there by attentions and invitations of every sort but never mentioned my sisters, which made me reply that I was making too short a stay in Madrid to give my time to any but my family. It is the same everywhere, this ridiculous feeling belongs to every country. There are here great and little France. My sisters are too well brought up to belong to the latter and they are not considered rich enough to be admitted to the former, so that the visits of the Drouillets were for me alone; at which Monsieur your son, took the liberty of putting Madame Drouillet in her place; and so she says that I am _malin_. You know what that means, my dear father, and whether there is malice in seeing things clearly and then in saying what one thinks."
In relation to the debtors of the elder Caron at Madrid, allusions frequently occur in the letters. For instance, the father writes, "I see what you have done and what you are doing among my debtors from whom I would never have drawn a farthing but for you." At another time Beaumarchais writes, "I am in a way to receive payment from all of your grandees--their self esteem is so mixed up with it that I think I shall manage to get all they owe you. My letters to them are polite but proud. The duke and duchess do not seem to want to be under any obligation to me, fearing that I will boast of it and that the length of the credit will be divulged. Let me manage it in my own way."