The letters of Beaumarchais to Vergennes during this period constantly revert to this theme, “Dubourg must be made to keep silence and not to compromise the ministry.” “If,” he writes in another place, “while we are closing the doors on one side, someone opens the windows on the other, it is impossible that the secret does not escape.” At length quite out of patience at some new and serious indiscretion which the good doctor in his simplicity had told to Beaumarchais himself, the latter wrote to Vergennes, “Is there then no way to stop the mouth of that cruel gossiper?... As he told me I could scarcely refrain from dealing him a blow, but I restrained myself, simply turning my back and walking away.... I depend upon you, M. le Comte, to deliver us from this fatal and mischief-making agent.” But Dubourg was by no means the only person interested in the cause of America who was sowing snares in the pathway of Beaumarchais and of Deane. At the worst, the good doctor was only indiscreet, he was never guilty of that personal ambition which in times of great crisis delights to bring ruin upon the schemes of others, and which uses all its power to thwart those enterprises which it cannot lead. Many enemies of this latter type were destined soon to manifest themselves. On the 1st of October, 1776, Silas Deane wrote to Congress of a certain Mr. Hopkins of Maryland, then in Paris, who without official authority was interesting himself in the same cause. “Offended at some supposed personal slight, he formed the dark design,” says Deane, “of defeating at one stroke my whole prospect as to supplies.... However thunderstruck I was, as well as my friend Monsieur Beaumarchais at this treachery ... we exerted ourselves and truth prevailed.... It would be too tedious to recount what I have met with in this way.... I do not mention a single difficulty with one complaining thought for myself.... I am happy in being so far successful, and that the machinations of my enemies, or rather the enemies of my country ... have been brought to nought.”