Pierre-Augustin Caron, who took the name of BEAUMARCHAIS (1732-99), son of a watchmaker of Paris, was born under a merry star, with a true genius for comedy, yet his theatrical pieces were only the recreations of a man of affairs--a demon of intrigue--determined to build up his fortune by financial adventures and commercial enterprises. Suddenly in 1774-75 he leaped into fame. Defeated in a trial in which his claim to fifteen thousand livres was disputed, Beaumarchais, in desperate circumstances, made his appeal to public opinion in four _Memoires_, which admirably united seriousness, gaiety, argument, irony, eloquence, and dramatic talent. "I am a citizen," he cried--"that is to say, something wholly new, unknown, unheard of in France. I am a citizen--that is to say, what you should have been two hundred years ago, what perhaps you will be twenty years hence." The word "citizen" sounded strange in 1774; it was soon to become familiar. Before this incident Beaumarchais had produced two dramas, _Eugenie_ and _Les Deux Amis_, of the tearful, sentimental, bourgeois type, yet with a romantic tendency, which distinguishes at least _Eugenie_ from the bourgeois drama of Diderot and of Sedaine. The failure of the second may have taught their author the wisdom of mirth; he abandoned his high dramatic principles to laugh and to evoke laughter. _Le Barbier de Seville_, developed from a comic opera to a comedy in five acts, was given, after long delays, in 1775. The spectators manifested fatigue; instantly the play reappeared in four acts, Beaumarchais having lost no time in removing the fifth wheel from his carriage. It delighted the public by the novelty of its abounding gaiety, a gaiety full and free, yet pointed with wit, a revolving firework scattering its dazzling spray. The old comic theme of the amorous tutor, the charming pupil, the rival lover, adorned with the prestige of youth, the intriguing attendant, was renewed by a dialogue which was alive with scintillating lights.