When the reader came to the allusions to secret arrests, protracted imprisonments, and the tedious formalities of the law and lawyers, he declared that it would be necessary to pull down the Bastile before it could be acted with safety, as Beaumarchais was ridiculing every thing which ought to 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.