While he was consuming himself in vain protestations, the day for the judgment of his suit approached. To the demands of M. de Sartine soliciting permission for Beaumarchais to go out for a few hours each day the duc de la Vrillière replied always, “That man is too insolent, let him follow his affair through his attorney!” and Beaumarchais, indignant and heart-broken, wrote to M. de Sartine: “It is completely proved to me that they desire that I shall lose my suit, if it is possible for me to lose it, but I admit that I was not prepared for the derisive answer of the duc de la Vrillière to solicit my affair through my attorney, he who knows as well as I, that it is forbidden to attorneys. Ah, great heavens! cannot an innocent man be lost without laughing in his face! Thus, Monsieur, have I been grievously insulted, justice has been denied me because my adversary is a man of quality, I have been put in prison, I am kept there, because I have been insulted by a man of quality. They even go so far as to blame me for enlightening the police as to the false impressions they have received, while the immodest gazettes Les Deux-Ponto and Hollande unworthily dishonor me to please my adversary. A little more and they would say that it was very insolent in me to have been outraged in every way by a man of quality, because what is the meaning of that phrase, ‘He has put too much boasting into this affair?’ Could I do less than demand justice and prove by the conduct of my adversary that I was in no way wrong? What a pretext for ruining an offended man, that of saying, ‘He has talked too much about his affair.’ As if it were possible to talk of anything else! Receive my sincere thanks, Monsieur, for having notified me of this refusal and this observation of M. the duc de la Vrillière, and for the happiness of the country may your power one day equal your sagacity and your integrity! My gratitude equals the profound respect with which I am, etc., “Beaumarchais. This March 11th, 1773” But the correspondence of Beaumarchais with M. de Sartine did not advance matters in the least. What M. the duc de la Vrillière exacted before everything else was that he cease to be insolent, that is to demand justice, and that he ask for pardon. Beaumarchais resisted this for about a month, when on the 20th of March he received a letter without signature, written by a man who seemed to interest himself in the situation and who endeavored to make Beaumarchais understand that under an absolute government, when anyone has incurred disgrace at the hands of a minister, and that minister keeps one in prison when one has the greatest possible interest to be free, it is not the thing to do to plead one’s cause as an oppressed citizen but to bow to the law of force and speak like a suppliant.