ment in
literature. Rousseau had led the way to impassioned admiration of the
beauties of nature; Bernardin de St. Pierre had just published his
_Etudes de la Nature;_ he had in the press his _Paul et Virginie;_ Abbe
Delille was reading his _Jardin,_ and M. de St. Lambert his _Saisons_.
In their different phases and according to their special instincts, all
minds, scholarly or political, literary or philosophical, were tending to
the same end, and pursuing the same attempt. It was nature which men
wanted to discover or recover: scientific laws and natural rights divided
men's souls between them. Buffon was still alive, and the great sailors
were every day enriching with their discoveries the _Jardin du Roi;_ the
physicists and the chemists, in the wake of Lavoisier, were giving to
science a language intelligible to common folks; the jurisconsults were
attempting to reform the rigors of criminal legislation at the same time
with the abuses they had entailed, and Beaumarchais was bringing on the
boards his _Manage de Figaro_.

The piece had been finished and accepted at the Theatre Francais since
the end of 1781, but the police-censors had refused permission to bring
it out. Beaumarchais gave readings of it; the court itself was amused to
see itself attacked, caricatured, turned into ridicule; the friends of
Madame de Polignac reckoned among the most ardent admirers of the _Manage
de Figaro_. The king desired to become acquainted with the piece. He
had it read by Madame de Campan, lady of the chamber to the queen, and
very much in her confidence. The taste and the principles of Louis XVI.
were equally shocked. "Perpetually Italian concetti!" he exclaimed.
When the reading was over: "It is detestable," said the king; "it shall
never be played; the Bastille would have to be destroyed to make the
production of this play anything but a dangerous inconsistency. This
fellow jeers at all that should be respected in a government."

Louis XVI. had correctly criticised the tendencies as well as the effects
of a production sparkling with wit, biting, insolent, licentious; but he
had relied too much upon his persistency in his opinions and his personal
resolves. Beaumarchais was more headstrong than the king; the readings
continued. The hereditary grand-duke of Russia, afterwards Paul I.,
happening to be at Paris in 1782, under the name of Count North, no
better diversion could be thought of for him than a reading of the