“If at the end of a cultivated education and a laborious youth, my parents could have left me an entire liberty as to the choice of a vocation, my invincible curiosity, my dominant taste for the study of mankind and its great interests, my insatiable desire to learn new things, and to form new combinations, would have led me to throw myself into politics.” So Beaumarchais had written in 1764, at a time when his intimacy with the diplomatic circle of the court of Madrid had opened up a vista of possible future usefulness in the world of politics and of vast business enterprises, connected with matters of national importance. When his hopes in both these directions had been blighted, we have seen him returning home, bent only upon giving up his appointments at court and retiring with Pauline to the West Indies, there to lead the life of a planter. This dream having likewise dissolved, his next thought was to find consolation in literature. Happy at last in his second marriage, prosperous and rich, his ambition limited itself for a time to the following of a literary career. Suddenly robbed of all these blessings by the untimely death of his wife and infant son, attacked by powerful enemies, forced to defend his honor and his life, we have followed him to where he now stands, a civilly degraded man, powerless in the grasp of overwhelmingly adverse circumstances. As we already have seen in this narrative, Beaumarchais was no stranger to adversity, whose only effect upon his character seems to have been to rouse him to ever greater and greater efforts to overcome the obstacles that would have seemed to another insurmountable. So in this case we find him turning at once the whole force of his being to outside conditions in order to discover what still remains to be done. The path which opened before him was one that could have presented itself only under such conditions of abuse of authority and of misrule as characterized the declining years of Louis XV, a condition which allowed justice to be given over into the hands of the infamous parliament of which it has just been question, and which tolerated by the side of the King of France a woman, Madame du Barry, who had begun her career as a girl of the streets. In the occult diplomacy of the court of Louis XV there was need enough for secret agents, and it was in this capacity that we find our civilly degraded man entering upon that new phase of his career which was so soon to place him where he could take a hand in directing the destinies of nations.