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 country house, that thus an opportunity might be afforded for judging whether or not the alterations which had been made were sufficient to render its performance innocent.

The king was assured that the passages which he had regarded as mischievous were suppressed or divested of their sting.  Marie Antoinette apparently had her suspicions; but Louis could never long withstand repeated solicitations, and, as he had not, when Madame de Campan read it, formed any very high opinion of its literary merits, he thought that, now that it was deprived of its venom, it would be looked upon as heavy, and would fail accordingly.  Some good