I allude to a comedy and a great swindling transaction.
Beaumarchais had long possessed a reputation in certain circles in Paris for his wit and musical talents, and at the theatres for dramas more or less indifferent, when his "Barbier de Seville" procured him a higher position among dramatic writers.

His "Memoirs" against M.Goesman had amused Paris by the ridicule they threw upon a Parliament which was disliked; and his admission to an intimacy with M.de Maurepas procured him a degree of influence over important affairs.

He then became ambitious of influencing public opinion by a kind of drama, in which established manners and customs should be held up to popular derision and the ridicule of the new philosophers.

After several years of prosperity the minds of the French had become more generally critical; and when Beaumarchais had finished his monstrous but diverting "Mariage de Figaro," all people of any consequence were eager for the gratification of hearing it read, the censors having decided that it should not be performed.
These readings of "Figaro" grew so numerous that people were daily heard to say, "I have been (or I am going to be) at the reading of Beaumarchais's play." The desire to see it performed became universal; an expression that he had the art to use compelled, as it were, the approbation of the nobility, or of persons in power, who aimed at ranking among the magnanimous; he made his "Figaro" say that "none but little minds dreaded little books." The Baron de Breteuil, and all the men of Madame de Polignac's circle, entered the lists as the warmest protectors of the comedy.

Solicitations to the King became so pressing that his Majesty determined to judge for himself of a work which so much engrossed public attention, and desired me to ask M.Le Noir, lieutenant of police, for the manuscript of the "Mariage de Figaro." One morning I received a note from the Queen ordering me to be with her at three o'clock, and not to come without having dined, for she should detain me some time.