Beaumarchais and the Duc de Chaulnes--Attempt Upon the Life of Beaumarchais--Same Evening Gives the Promised Reading of the _Barbier de Séville_--Victim of a _Lettre de Cachet_. It will be remembered that Gudin in his history of Beaumarchais speaks of a meeting of literary men at the table of a certain Mademoiselle Ménard, _femme d’esprit_, where the subject of the comic opera lately composed by Beaumarchais was discussed. It was this same Mademoiselle Ménard who in the words of Loménie was “the cause of an Homeric combat between Beaumarchais, prudent and dexterous as Ulysses, and a duke and peer, robust and ferocious as Ajax.” Mademoiselle Ménard was a young and pretty actress, who in June, 1770, had made her début with success at the Comédie Italienne. In his _Correspondence littéraire_, of June, 1770, Baron von Grimme, the great critic of the time, says of her after a rather cold analysis: “Mademoiselle Ménard must be given a trial; she seems capable of great application. It is said that her first occupation was that of a flower girl on the boulevards, but wishing to withdraw from that estate which has degenerated a little from the first nobility of its origin, since Glysère sold bouquets at the doors of the temple of Athens, she bought a grammar and applied herself to a study of the language and its pronunciation, after which she tried playing comedies. During her first attempts, she has addressed herself to all the authors, musicians, and poets, asking their counsels with a zeal and docility which has had for recompense the applause which she has obtained in her different rôles. M. de Pequigny, to-day the duc de Chaulnes, protector of her charms, has had her portrait painted by Greuze; so if we do not retain her in the theater we shall at least see her at the next salon.” Acting on the wishes of her protector, Mademoiselle Ménard had renounced the theater and was in the habit of receiving at her house poets, musicians, and great lords, Beaumarchais among the rest. “The duc de Chaulnes,” says Loménie, “was a man notorious for the violence and extravagance of his character. The history of Beaumarchais by Gudin contains details about him in every way confirming the testimony of other contemporaries.” “His character,” wrote Gudin, “was a peculiar mixture of contradictory qualities; _esprit_ without judgment, pride, with such a lack of discernment as to rob him of dignity before superiors, equals or inferiors, a vast but disorderly memory, a great desire to improve himself, a still greater taste for dissipation, a prodigious strength of body, a violence of disposition which rendered him extremely unreasonable and robbed him of the power to think clearly, frequent fits of rage which made of him a savage beast incapable of being controlled.