After a spirited recapitulation of his wrongs he continues, "In a word, Messieurs, you will give the piece, or you will not give it, it is not that which is important to-day. What is important is to put an end to so much indecision. Let us agree that if you accept I shall within eight days receive from you a certified account ... and when that term has expired, I may regard a silence on your part as an obstinate refusal to do me justice. You will not then object if, making a pious use of my rights as author, I confide the interests of the poor to those persons whose zeal and interests oblige them to discuss these interests more methodically than I, who profess to be always, with the greatest love of peace,... Yours, etc.,
The comedians in their turn awakened by the letter just quoted replied before the expiration of the eight days, promising the much desired meeting. Beaumarchais accepted their proposal with his usual grace and himself fixed the day for the assembly. Fresh difficulties arose. The comedians wrote an apologetic letter asking for a further delay of a few days.
"I thought the comedians very good," wrote Beaumarchais, "to fear that after waiting more than a year for their convenience, I should be offended by a new delay of a few days; I was too used to their manner of proceeding to lose patience at so small a cost. I resolved, therefore, to await the moment when it should please the fugitive assembly to meet. I waited until the 15th of June, when I received a letter from M. le Maréchal de Duras...."
"The comedians," says Loménie "brought to the wall had solicited the support of the duke, who intervened and begged the claimant to discuss the matter with him. As Beaumarchais demanded nothing better, he hastened to offer to the Duke of Duras the same lesson in bookkeeping which he had vainly offered to the comedians.... Beaumarchais wrote to him:
"'You are too much interested, M. le Maréchal, in the progress of the most beautiful of the arts, not to admit that if those who play the pieces gain an income of twenty-thousand livres, those who thus make the fortune of the comedians should be able to draw from it that which is absolutely necessary. There is no personal interest, M. le Maréchal, in my demand; the love of justice and of letters alone determines me. The man whom the impulsion of a great genius might have carried to a renewal of the beautiful chefs-d'oeuvre of our masters, certain that he cannot live three months from the fruits of the vigils of three years, after having lost five in waiting, becomes a journalist, a libellist or debases himself in some other trade as lucrative as degrading.'"