Accused of having defamed the wife of a judge, after having fruitlessly attempted to seduce her, Beaumarchais succeeded, by dint of courage, talent, and wit, in holding his own against the whole magistracy leagued against him.

He boldly appealed to public opinion.

"I am a citizen," he said; "that is to say, I am not a courtier, or an abbe, or a nobleman, or a financier, or a favorite, nor anything connected with what is called influence (_puissance_) nowadays.

I am a citizen; that is to say, something quite new, unknown, unheard of in France.

I am a citizen; that is to say, what you ought to have been for the last two hundred years, what you will be, perhaps, in twenty!" All the spirit of the French Revolution was here, in those most legitimate and at the same time most daring aspirations of his.
French citizen as he proclaimed himself to be, Beaumarchais was quite smitten with the American citizens; he had for a long while been pleading their cause, sure, he said, of its ultimate triumph.