“The success of this representation at Grennevilliers was such,” to continue the account of Loménie, “that a complete change operated in Beaumarchais’s attitude toward the piece. Resigned hitherto under the royal prohibition, working slowly and carefully to gain ground, he now became impatient, pressing and almost imperious. It is clear to anyone who will reflect, that on the day when Louis XVI permitted at the insistence of the Queen, the Comte d’Artois and M. de Vaudreuil to the representation at Grennevillier, he placed himself where he would be unable long to resist public curiosity, carried now to the heights by that very representation, of which everyone spoke, and by the address of Beaumarchais.” It was not, however, until March, 1784, that the desired permission was given. “The picture of that representation of _Le Mariage de Figaro_,” says Loménie, “is in all the chronicles of the times, it is the best remembered scene of the eighteenth century. All Paris from earliest morning, pressed the doors of the Théâtre-Français; the greatest ladies dining in the boxes of the actresses so as to be sure of their places—the guards dispersed, the doors broken down, the iron railings giving way before the crowd of assailants. When the curtain rose upon the scene, the finest reunion of talent which the Théâtre-Français had ever possessed was there with but one thought, to bring out to the best advantage a comedy, flashing with _esprit_, carrying one away in its movement and audacity, which if it shocks some of the boxes, enchants, stirs, enflames and electrifies the parterre.” And what is this play that roused such wild enthusiasm a century and more ago, and which to-day, although its political significance has long vanished, would still give its author, had he done nothing but create its characters, a right to a place among the immortals? “The _Mariage de Figaro_,” to quote his own words, “was the most trivial of intrigues: “A great Spanish nobleman, in love with a young girl whom he wishes to seduce, and the efforts of that same girl and of him to whom she is engaged, and of the wife of the nobleman united to outwit his designs—and he an absolute master whose rank, fortune and prodigality render all powerful its accomplishment—that and nothing more.” The characters are those in the main of the _Barbier_: the Comte Almaviva, the Comtesse Rosine, and the valet Figaro, are old friends. But there are new ones, the page Cherubim, and Suzanne, lady’s maid to the Comtesse—“Always laughing, tender, full of gaiety, of _esprit_, of love and delicious!—but good.”