It cannot be denied, however, that Beaumarchais’s own character lent itself to misrepresentation. The very brilliancy and versatility of his genius was a snare to him, while the expansiveness of his nature gave such an air of adventure to his most sober acts, that they often were regarded with suspicion by those whom he most desired to serve. The misunderstandings which arose from these innate qualities were keenly felt by Beaumarchais. Moreover, he early realized that the ministry, while making use of his rare abilities, intended to keep him in the background. Beaumarchais was neither willing to forego recognition nor resigned to the obscurity in which he was left. The gay philosophy of his nature enabled him to laugh at his misfortunes, although it was only as he himself has said through his creation, _Figaro_, “that he might not be obliged to weep.” Stung to the quick on finding himself thrust aside in the midst of his almost superhuman exertions in the American cause, he turned for relief to lighter matters and found distraction by writing _Le Mariage de Figaro_, the gayest comedy perhaps ever put upon the stage, and one so full of political significance that it was condemned by the authorities, though in the end he succeeded in bringing it before the public, in spite of the King and his ministers. Such a man was Beaumarchais, that it is no wonder that he failed to receive recognition for his serious labors, or that many people refused to believe him in earnest at all. If his own nation regarded him somewhat in the light of an adventurer, surely the men of the New World, bred in stern necessity, accustomed to deal only with hard facts and unyielding realities, may be judged with less severity if they failed in comprehending the true nature of their benefactor and friend. He himself was the first to forgive them, and no spirit of enmity or personal resentment was ever to be observed in his subsequent attitude towards them. To the end he called them “My friends, the free men of America.” When, during the French Revolution, Beaumarchais, finding himself an exile, reduced to a beggarly garret in an obscure quarter of Hamburg while his wife, his daughter, and his sisters were languishing in a French prison, his property confiscated, and his credit ruined, addressed a final desperate appeal to the American people, begging for justice, not a voice was raised in his favor. Since Robert Morris, the Philadelphia financier, was allowed to remain for years in a debtor’s prison, it is not surprising that little interest was roused by the claims of a foreigner, in whose existence even, people refused seriously to believe.