“Marmontel and Sedaine, who were of the company, knowing very well all of the _Comédiens des Italiens_, revealed to us the secret of the disgrace of the _Barbier_. They told us that the principal actor, before showing himself on the stage, had figured, razor in hand in the shops of the wig-makers, and now he did not wish to produce anything which would recall his origin. We laughed, we moralized and it was decided that Beaumarchais should carry his work to the Théâtre-Français.” It is this many-sided, this complex character of Beaumarchais which makes him so difficult to understand. Immersed in financial difficulties which would have overwhelmed an ordinary man, we find him composing an immortal dramatic production. Still deeper plunged in distresses, and caught in a net of harassing circumstances almost unbelievable, we find him attacking single-handed one of the greatest wrongs of the nation and pulling himself out of a quicksand to be borne in triumph on the shoulders of the people of France. In 1772, two years before the time of the lawsuit brought by the Comte de la Blache against Beaumarchais, by an arbitrary act of the Chancellor Maupeou under the sanction of the old king Louis XV, the ancient parliaments of the realm had been dissolved and in their place a new one had been set up, called the Parliament Maupeou. From the beginning it met with very bitter opposition. To quote Loménie, “The nation had bowed itself under the glorious scepter of Louis XIV, but that scepter fallen into the hands of Louis XV no longer inspired respect. The spirit of resistance to arbitrary power was general. In the absence of every other guarantee, the parliaments presented themselves as the one barrier which could be opposed to the caprices of a disorderly power, and whatever were the particular vices of those bodies, judicial and political, every time that they resisted the royal will they had with them the sympathy of the public. “Supported by this, the parliaments saw themselves growing stronger day by day. Closely united the one to the other, they declared themselves ‘the members of a single and individual body, inherent in the monarchy, an organ of the nation, essential depository of its liberty, of its interests and of its rights.’ “Every one of their combats with royalty terminated by a victory, until at last a man issuing from their ranks, an audacious and obstinate character, undertook to command or crush them. This man was the Chancellor Maupeou.