"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 _Manage de Figaro_.