The Government of 1830 did right in giving the name of Beaumarchais to the boulevard on which he at one time lived, and where he possessed a certain amount of property. During the stormy years that immediately preceded the Revolution of 1789 Beaumarchais was an important figure; and the effect of the "Marriage of Figaro" on the public mind was in a good measure to prepare it for the general overthrow then imminent. The King, the Queen, the Ministers, were all, in the first instance, afraid of the "Marriage of Figaro"; and we have seen that to get it produced Beaumarchais displayed as much diplomacy and energy as would suffice in the present day to upset a Cabinet. While living at his mansion near the Porte St.-Antoine, Beaumarchais built close at hand the Théâtre du Marais, where, after letting it to a manager, he brought out, in 1792, his "Mère Coupable"--the third part of his Figaro Trilogy, in which the Count and Countess Almaviva, Figaro and Susannah, are shown in their old age. The "guilty mother" is the Countess herself; the charming and, as one had hoped, innocent Rosina of the "Barber of Seville." The male offender is Chérubin, better known under his operatic name of Cherubino, who after saying in the French comedy, with a mixture of timidity and audacity, "Si j'osais oser!" ends by daring too much. "La Mère Coupable" obtained but little success, and deserved none. Closed by Imperial order in 1807, the Théâtre du Marais existed only for fifteen years. It must not be confounded with the ancient theatre of the same name where in 1636 Corneille produced his famous tragedy "Le Cid." The Marais or marsh, whose name recalls the early history of Paris, when Lutetia was defended by marshes as by a broad impassable moat, has long been known as the favourite abode of small pensioners and fundholders, who in this remote quarter found food and shelter at inexpensive rates. The Marais, however, has had, like most other parts of Paris, its illustrious residents; and when about the middle of the eighteenth century the immortal actress Mlle. Clairon lived there she was the third famous inmate of the tenement in which she had taken up her abode. "I was told of a small house in the Rue du Marais," she writes in her memoirs, "which I could have for two hundred francs, where Racine was said to have lived forty years with his family. I was informed that it was there he had composed his imperishable works and there that he died; and that afterwards it had been occupied by the tender Lecouvreur, who had ended her days in it. 'The walls of the house,' I reflected, 'will be alone sufficient to make me feel the sublimity of the author and develop the talents of the actress. In this sanctuary then I will live and die!'"