“When Beaumarchais in exile, learned all the deprivations from which his family suffered he learned also that they had sufficient moral courage to support them. Gaiety had not wholly disappeared from that interior which used to be so joyous; even if exposed to starvation, the frightful guillotine no longer operated and one began to breathe more freely.” One of his old friends wrote to him, “See now the soup tureen of the family arrive, that is to say, upon the mahogany table (there is no such thing as a cloth) is a plate of beans, two potatoes, a carafe of wine, with very much water. Thy daughter asks for a white poodle to use as a napkin and clean the plates—but no matter, come, come; if we have nothing to eat we have plenty to laugh about. Come, I tell thee, for thy wife needs a miller since thy _salon_ is decorated with a flour mill; while thy Eugénie charms thee upon her piano, thou wilt prepare her breakfast, while thy wife knits thy stockings, and thy future son-in-law turns baker; for here everyone has his trade and that is why our cows are so well guarded. “It is too droll to see our women, without perruque in the morning, filling each one her occupation, because you must know that each one of us is at their service and because in our _régime_, if there are no masters, there are at least valets. This letter costs thee at least a hundred francs counting the paper, pens, the oil of the lamp, because for economy’s sake I came to thy house to write it. We embrace thee with all our hearts.” And his faithful Gudin wrote him, though in much more somber strain, from his retreat in the country: “My most ardent desire, my friend, is to see you again and to press you to my heart; but circumstances are such that I had to leave Paris where I could no longer subsist. I have taken refuge in a little hamlet fifty miles away, where there are thirteen peasant cabins. The house which I inhabit was a tiny priory, occupied once by a single monk.” And after a very long and profoundly pessimistic discourse upon the sad condition of affairs which he likens to the barbarity which formerly engulfed Greece and Egypt and Assyria, Sicily, and Italy, he terminates thus: “Adieu my good friend, I would have wished to have talked to you of yourself, of your family, of those whom you love, the regrets which we feel to meet no more together. Our hearts like your own, are crushed with sorrow.... I embrace you and sigh for the happy moment that will unite us. “Gudin.” [Illustration: MADAME DE BEAUMARCHAIS] Now that his anxieties for his family were allayed, Beaumarchais was not idle, for his stay in Hamburg was occupied in drawing up memoirs upon matters of public utility, in commercial negotiations, and in agreeable companionships with distinguished _émigrés_ who like himself were anxiously awaiting the moment when they could return to France.