We have already related that M. Arnault, whose _Marius à Minturnes_ had succeeded, in spite of Monsieur's prediction, paid, in all probability, for this want of respect for the opinion of His Royal Highness by four years of exile, on the return of the Bourbons. And this was not Louis XVIII.'s first attempt on his _confrères_, the men of letters. Without mentioning M. de Chateaubriand, whom he hounded out of the ministry as though he were a lackey,--an act which caused that worthy gentleman to remark, on receiving his dismissal, "It is strange, for I have not stolen the king's watch!"--without counting Magallon, whom he sent to Poissy chained to a scurvy convict; without counting M. Arnault, whom he banished from the country; there was, besides, a little story of the same kind in connection with Beaumarchais. More than once has M. Arnault related in my hearing the curious and too little known history of Beaumarchais' imprisonment. These are the facts. There is always a public Censorship, except during the first two or three months following the accession of princes to the throne, and the two or three months after they are deposed; but when these three months have elapsed, the Censorship reappears on the waters after its plunge, and proceeds to discover some minister, preferably of Liberal or even Republican tendencies, and to lay a snare for him. When the _Mariage de Figaro_ was running its course, M. Suard was censor, and he was also a journalist. He was one of those who had most bitterly opposed the representation of Beaumarchais' work, and he was largely responsible for the fifty-nine journeys--_du marais à la police_--that the illustrious author made without being able to obtain leave for his play to be performed. At length, thanks to the intervention of the queen and the Comte d'Artois, the _Folle Journée_, recovered intact out of the claws of these gentlemen, was played on 27 April 1784. M. Suard was vindictive both in his capacity as censor and as a journalist; so that if he could not exercise the Censorship by the use of scissors, he had recourse to his pen. M. Suard was on very familiar terms with the Comte de Provence, and he served the Comte de Provence as a screen when His Royal Highness wished to give vent, incognito, to some petty literary spite. M. le Comte de Provence detested Beaumarchais almost as much as did M. Suard himself; the result was that the Comte de Provence hastened to unburden himself, by means of M. Suard, in the _Journal de Paris_, against the unfortunate _Mariage de Figaro_, which continued its successful run, in spite of M. Suard's signed articles or the anonymous articles of His Royal Highness. In the meantime, Beaumarchais handed over the sum of about thirty or forty thousand francs which he received as author's rights in the _Mariage de Figaro_ to the _association for helping poor foster-mothers._