o be respected. "It
is not to be performed, then?" said the queen. "No," replied the king,
"you may depend upon that."

Similar refusals of a license had been common enough, so that there was no
reason in the world why this decision should have attracted any notice
whatever. But Beaumarchais was the fashion. He had influential patrons
even in the palace: the Count d'Artois and Madame de Polignac, with the
coterie which met in her apartments, being among them; and the mere idea
that the court or the Government was afraid to let the play be acted
caused thousands to desire to see it, who, without such a temptation,
would have been wholly indifferent to its fate. The censor could not
prevent its being read at private parties, and such readings became so
popular that, in 1782, one was got up for the amusement of the Russian
prince, who was greatly pleased by the liveliness of the dramatic
situations, and, probably, not sufficiently aware of the prevalence of
discontent in many circles of French society to sympathize with those who
saw danger in its satire.

The praises lavished on it gave the author greater boldness, which was
quite unnecessary. He even meditated an evasion of the law by getting it
acted in a place which was not a theatre, and tickets were actually issued
for the performance in a saloon which was often used for rehearsals, when
a royal warrant[1] peremptorily forbidding such a proceeding was sent down
from the palace. A clamor was at once raised by the friends of
Beaumarchais, as if "sealed letters" had never been issued before. They
talked in a loud voice of "oppression" and "tyranny;" and any one who knew
the king's disposition might have divined that such an act of vigor was
sure to be followed by one of weakness. Presently Beaumarchais changed his
tone. He gave out that he had retrenched the passages which had excited
the royal disapproval, and requested that the play might be re-examined. A
new censor of high literary reputation reported to the head of the
police[2] that if one or two passages were corrected, and one or two
expressions, which were liable to be misinterpreted, were suppressed, he
foresaw no danger in allowing the representation. Beaumarchais at once
promised to make the required corrections, and one of Madame de Polignac's
friends, the Count de Vaudreuil, the very nobleman with whom that lady's
name was by many discreditably connected, obtained the king's leave to
perform it at his cou