Yet it was this man who gave light popular expression to the principles to which Voltaire and his friends devoted their lives, their ardour, and their genius. It was surely a cruelty of fate that the Master could not live to see ‘Figaro.’ Its author might miss its significance, but Voltaire--never. Beaumarchais, indeed, had merely caught the accent of his age, as a child catches the accent of its nurse, and ‘wrote revolutionary literature, as M. Jourdain spoke prose, without knowing it.’ In ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ he said what all men were feeling, but not what he felt. He wished to be a successful playwright, and he was one; but he did not mean to be one of the greatest and most influential of Revolutionists--and he was that too. He followed up the success of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ by generously founding a fashionable charity, to be known later as the Benevolent Maternal Institution, and the King followed up the success he had always disliked by punishing an imprudent letter Caron had written in a newspaper, and which had offended Monsieur, by writing on a playing card, as he sat at his game, an order for Beaumarchais’ imprisonment. By one of those charming little surprises for which the old _régime_ was so celebrated, Beaumarchais, of fifty-three, found himself locked up in St. Lazare, then a house of correction for juvenile offenders. At first Paris went into roars of laughter, and then she became very angry indeed. In a few days she obtained the release of her playwright; and Louis, with the inconceivable inconsistency that distinguished his career, not only gave him enormous monetary compensation, but permitted as a further reparation, ‘The Barber of Seville’ to be played at the Little Trianon. That representation marked the crowning point of Beaumarchais’ success. Dazincourt trained the company of royal and noble amateurs. Marie Antoinette was rehearsing the part of Rosina with Madame de Campan when she first heard of the opening of a grimmer drama, the scandal of the Diamond Necklace. On August 15, 1785, Cardinal de Rohan was arrested. On the 19th, ‘The Barber of Seville’ was played in the theatre of the Little Trianon, with lucky Beaumarchais in the audience, the Queen as Rosina, the Comte de Vaudreuil as Almaviva, the Duc de Guiche as Bartholo, and the Comte d’Artois as Figaro. The Queen was infinitely vivacious in her part. Did Bazile’s terrible definition of Calumny disconcert her? ‘At first a mere breath, skimming the ground like a swallow, but sowing poison as it flies ... it takes root, creeps up, makes its way, goes ... from mouth to mouth: then, all of a sudden, one knows not how, Calumny is standing upright, rearing its head, hissing, swelling, growing visibly. It spreads its wings, takes flight, eddies round ... bursts, thunders, crashes, and becomes, thanks to heaven, a general outcry, a public crescendo, a universal chorus of hatred and proscription. What devil could resist it?’