“Yesterday’s dinner, my dear Charles, is one that will long remain in my memory because of the precious choice of _convives_ which our friend Dumas [General Mathieu-Dumas, brother-in-law of M. Delarue] had assembled at the house of his brother. On former occasions when I dined with the great ones of the State, I have been shocked at the assemblage of so many whose birth alone allowed them to be admitted. _Des sots de qualité, des imbéciles en place, des hommes vains de leurs richesses, des jeunes impudents, des coquettes_, etc. If it was not the ark of Noah, it was at least the court of the _Roi Petaut_; but yesterday out of twenty-four persons at table, there was not one whose great personal merit would not have given him a right to his place. It was, I might say, an excellent _extrait_ of the French Republic, and I, who sat silent, regarding them, applied to each the great merit which distinguished him. Here are their names:” And then, after making the inventory, he terminates thus: “The dinner was instructive, in no way noisy, very agreeable, in a word such as I do not remember to have ever before experienced. “Caron Beaumarchais.” “Four months later,” says Loménie, “_un coup d’état_ had proscribed nearly every one of those twenty-four _convives_.” “The deputies of the people,” says Gudin, “were taken from their sacred seats, locked up in portable cages like wild beasts, tossed on board vessels and transported to Guyan.” This _coup d’état_ cooled very considerably the republican ardor of Beaumarchais; “He was totally at a loss,” continues Gudin, “to understand either the men or their doings; he failed to comprehend anything relative to the forms or the means employed in those times without rule or principle. He called upon reason, which had helped him triumph so many times; reason had become a stranger, she was, if we dare say it, a species of _émigrée_ whose name rendered suspicious anyone who invoqued her.”