Everything being in readiness, it was decided that the performance should be given at the Théâtre des Menus-Plaisirs, where the Comte de Vaudreuil’s influence was paramount, on June 13, 1783. The interest it excited was intense. As the appointed hour drew near, the approaches to the theatre were blocked by hundreds of coaches; all the fashionable world seemed determined to be present. The consternation, therefore, may be imagined when a rumour began to spread that there would be no play that evening; that the King had forbidden the performance. At first, the gaily-dressed crowd was inclined to be incredulous. But a notice posted on the doors of the theatre confirmed the rumour, and sent them away, complaining bitterly of the “oppression” and “tyranny” of the King, who at the eleventh hour had sent orders, through his Minister of the Household, the Baron de Breteuil, prohibiting the representation of _Le Mariage de Figaro_ under pain of disobedience, and, the next day, caused the players to be summoned before the Lieutenant of Police, when the prohibition was repeated in a form employed by the royal authority only on the gravest occasions. But Beaumarchais was not the man to despair. He withdrew to London, ostensibly on commercial business, but really, no doubt, to be out of the way the while Vaudreuil solicited and obtained the King’s consent to the _Mariage de Figaro_ being performed in the course of a fête which the count intended to give at his country-house at Gennevilliers. “The Comte d’Artois,” wrote the Duc de Fronsac to Beaumarchais from that place, “is coming to hunt here about the 18th (September), and the Duc de Polignac with his party to sup. Vaudreuil has consulted me as to giving them a play, as we have a capital room. I told him that he could not find a more charming one than the _Mariage de Figaro_. The King has given his consent, have we yours?” Beaumarchais, on his return to Paris, duly gave his “consent,” but only on condition that the play should be re-examined. The royal veto, said he, had exposed his work to the charge of immorality, and until that stigma had been removed from it by a formal approbation, on no consideration would he allow it to be played. It was a masterly move, for while no censor would be likely to forbid an entertainment sanctioned by the King, the desired approbation, besides stimulating the curiosity of the public, would have the effect of covering his Majesty’s opposition to the piece with ridicule. One would have supposed that the authorities would have been sufficiently alert to detect the trap laid for them, but they walked into it without hesitation, and sent the manuscript to the historian Gaillard,[151] who reported to the Lieutenant of Police as follows: