_“I have seen Beaumarchais’s ridiculous drama, And in a single word I will say what it is; It is an exchange where money circulates, Without producing any interest.”_ Lintilhac remarks, “He gave in this crisis a double proof of his genius; in the first place, he allowed his piece to fall without comment, and in the second he did not despair of his dramatic vocation.” Already Beaumarchais was meditating his _Barbier de Séville_ but in the meantime he was seriously occupied with a new and extensive business transaction. The fortune of his wife had enabled him to enter into a partnership with old Du Verney in the acquisition of the vast forest of Chinon, which they bought from the government. A letter to his wife, dated July 15, 1769, shows him at his work. “De Rivarennes. “You invite me to write, my good friend, and I wish to with all my heart, it is an agreeable relaxation from the fatigues of my stay in this village. Misunderstandings among the heads of departments to be reconciled, complaints, and demands of clerks to be listened to, an account of more than 100,000 _écus_, in sums of from 20 to 30 _sous_ to regulate, and of which it was necessary to discharge the regular cashier, the different posts to be visited, two hundred workmen of the forest whose work must be examined, two hundred and eighty acres of wood cut down whose preparation and transportation must be looked after, new roads to be constructed into the forest and to the river, the old roads to be mended, three or four hundred tons of hay to be stacked, provisions of oats for thirty dray horses to be arranged for, thirty other horses to be brought for the transport of all the wood for the navy before winter, gates and sluices to be constructed in the river Indre in order to give us water all the year at the place where the wood is discharged, fifty vessels which wait to be loaded for Tours, Saumur, Angers and Nantes, the leases of seven or eight farms to sign, beside the provision for housing thirty persons; the general inventory of our receipts and expenses for the last two years to regulate, _voilà_, my dear wife, briefly the sum of my occupations of which part is terminated and the rest _en bon train_.”