When Beaumarchais found himself actually charged with a criminal accusation capable of sending him to the public infamy of the pillory or the galleys, unable to find a lawyer willing to plead his cause, it was then that the whole power of his genius was revealed to him. Instantly he realized that he was to be his own lawyer, and that from the magistracy before him, it was to the people that he must appeal, “that judge of judges,” and we see him flinging forth one factum after another, while all the force of his soul, the gaiety of his character, the brilliancy of his wit, returned to him in overabundant measure. The family and friends, lately so depressed, rose with the rising of his courage, lent to him the whole force of their beings and formed the constant inspiration of his ever-increasing success. In a few weeks his first memoir had attracted the attention of all France, while in less than three days after the publication of the fourth, more than six thousand copies had been sold. At the ball or the opera, people tore them from one another’s hands, and in the cafés and foyers of the theaters they were read out loud to enthusiastically admiring crowds. [Illustration: Title Page of the Mémoires de M^r Caron de Beaumarchais] What could be more surprising? Judicial factums or memoirs universally recognized as being the dryest and most uninteresting of writings come to be preferred to all others? It was, as Voltaire said, after reading the fourth memoir, “No comedy was ever more amusing, no tragedy more touching,” and Lintilhac taking up this judgment and applying it to the memoirs has made perhaps the most brilliant of the many criticisms which this subject has called forth. “The judgment of Voltaire,” he says, “reveals to us the most original of their merits, that of being a tragi-comedy in five acts. The unity of the subject is placed in evidence by this question which is so often raised. Who is culpable of the crime of corruption--the judge whose surroundings put his justice at auction, or the litigant thus constrained to scatter gold about the judge? “The five memoirs mark the phases of the debate. The first is a perfect exposition of the subject destined to soothe the judges. After having made a résumé of the preceding incidents, and taken his position, Beaumarchais engages the offensive and orders his intrigue by light skirmishes in the form of episodes. Then he opens a dramatic perspective upon the sudden changes of the contest.