Everything was ready, even the tickets were out, when suddenly an express order of the king arrived, forbidding the performance. “This prohibition of the king,” says Madame de Campan, “seemed like an attack upon the liberty of the public. The disappointed hopes of the people excited discontent to such an extent that the words, ‘_oppression_,’ ‘_tyranny_’ were never pronounced in the days before the fall of the throne, with so much passion and vehemence.” Beaumarchais could well afford, as he writes, “to put his piece back in its portfolio, waiting until some event should draw it out again,” for the prohibition of the king had acted only as the most serviceable advertisement. Therefore he had not long to wait. Being in England on business the latter part of the summer, he received a letter from the Duc de Fronsac, from which the following is an extract: “Paris, the 4th of September, 1783. “I hope, Monsieur, that you will not object that I shall write to obtain your consent to have the _Mariage de Figaro_ played at Grennevilliers.... You know that I have for several years turned over my estate of Grennevilliers to M. de Vaudreuil. M. le Comte d’Artois comes there to hunt the 18th and Madame the Duchess de Polignac with her society comes to supper. Vaudreuil has asked me to arrange a spectacle, for there is a good enough hall. I told him that there was nothing more charming than the _Mariage de Figaro_, but that we must have the consent of the king. _We have secured that and_ I went running to find you and was astonished and distressed to find that you were far away in the north. “Will you not give your consent that the piece be played? I promise you that I will do my utmost to have it well given. M. le Comte d’Artois and his whole society are waiting with the greatest eagerness to see it, and certainly it will be a great step in advance towards having it given at Fontainebleau and Paris.... I, in particular, have the greatest desire and I beg you to reply quickly, quickly. Let it be favorable, I beg you, and never doubt my gratitude and the esteem and friendship with which I shall always be, Monsieur, yours, etc. “Le duc de Fronsac.” “While the duc de Fronsac,” says Loménie, “sent after Beaumarchais, the comte de Vaudreuil who was arranging the festival in honor of the comte d’Artois and Madame de Polignac, waited with impatience for the consent of Beaumarchais. We have under our eyes a letter of the comte written to the duc de Fronsac which was found among the papers of Beaumarchais, apparently because the latter fearing some sudden change of feeling in the King, had requested that the duc give him the entire correspondence, in order that he might be in a position to prove that he had acted only at the urgent solicitations of the courtiers.