_Beaumarchais in “Essai sur le genre dramatique sérieux,” prefixed to the edition of “Eugénie.”_ “_Eugénie_”--“_Les deux Amis_”--Second Marriage of Beaumarchais--The Forest of Chinon--Death of Madame de Beaumarchais. The immediate effect of Pauline’s desertion of Beaumarchais was to turn his thoughts from the gay world in which he was so brilliant and so striking a figure, to the more sober realms of literature. His talent as an author already had manifested itself by several farces and charades written for his colleague, M. Lenormant d’Étioles, the husband of Madame de Pompadour, at whose château d’Étioles they were produced. The very spicy charade, “_John Bête à la Foire_,” was written in 1762 for a special festival given at this château in the forest of Senart. On this occasion and on all similar occasions the farces of Beaumarchais found no more spirited interpreters than his own sisters. Fournier says, “The youngest played comedies with a surprising _verve de gaillardise_, and it would seem, was not frightened by the most highly seasoned of her brother’s productions. She and the Countess of Turpin played the leading parts. Comedies and charades were also played enchantingly by Julie who frequently arranged them in her own style; several scenes and not the least spicy, according to family tradition, passing as her own production.” But this vein of true Gallic wit which was later to carry its possessor to almost unprecedented heights of fame was not in keeping with the spirit in which Beaumarchais found himself during the winter of 1766. The entire family as we have seen possessed in an unusual degree a warm life blood which burst spontaneously into joyful expression, but it showed itself also in sentimental sallies. The English novelist, Richardson, was a favorite with them all and we find Julie writing in her diary, about this time, “I see in Beaumarchais a second Grandison; it is his genius, his goodness, his noble and superior soul, equally sweet and honest. Never a bitter sentiment for his enemies arises in his heart. He is the friend of man. Grandison is the glory of all who surround him, and Beaumarchais is their honor.” The father writing to his son during an illness said: “In the intervals when I suffer less I read Grandison and in how many things I have found a just and noble resemblance between him and my son. Father of thy sisters, friend and benefactor of thy father, ‘if England,’ I said to myself, ‘has her Grandison; France has her Beaumarchais; with this difference, that the English Grandison is the fiction of an amiable writer, while the French Beaumarchais really exists to be the consolation of my days.’”