Du Verney also aided Beaumarchais in the acquiring of certain functions at court which gave him a legal claim to his title of nobility. In 1761 he bought for 85,000 francs the very noble but very useless charge of Secretary to the King. An attempt was made afterwards to bring him into a still higher place by securing for him the very important and very lucrative charge of Grand Master of the Waters and Forests of France. M. de Loménie says in speaking of this matter that had it been successful, the whole career of Beaumarchais might have been changed. As it proved, however, so much opposition was aroused by the almost meteoric rapidity with which he had arrived at so great fortune that for the first time in his life, and notwithstanding the warm recommendations of Mesdames, Beaumarchais was forced to change the direction of his solicitations and to content himself with the less lucrative but even more honorable charge of _lieutenant-général des chasses aux bailliage et capitainerie de la varenne du Louvre_.
For a young man of bourgeois extraction, not yet thirty years of age, his complete transformation had come about with an almost incredible rapidity. The new office, which will be treated in detail later, placed him on the level with the ancient aristocracy of France and gave him a social position which his ever-increasing fortune enabled him more and more effectively to support.
Not content, however, with his own rise in the world, he desired to share his fortune with his whole family. We shall soon see him uniting them all under his roof in Paris, but for the moment we must picture him continuing to live at Versailles, and though occupied for the most part with his new business operations, he still has time to superintend, as of old, the pastimes and amusements of the Princesses, as well as to cultivate his rare social gifts. No man ever made a more amiable or a more brilliant figure in a salon. His music, his songs, his jests and repartees, the gaiety and ardor of his nature, made him everywhere a favorite.
Gudin says of him at this period, "He never forgot his old comrades and almost never came to Paris without staying with his father, going to see and embracing his neighbors, and those who had been witnesses of his first efforts. Showing himself as far removed from the silly vanity which blushes at its origin as from the pride which pretends to be what it is not; by his gaiety and affability he made those about him forget the change in his fortune and even at times the superiority of his talents. In the bosom of his family his manners were simple, he was even what one calls a _bonhomme_." Characterizing him a little further on, Gudin says, "For frivolous people Beaumarchais was only a man of the world; for the ladies, a man attractive by his figure and his wit, amusing by his talents, his dress, his imagination and a host of amiable adventures such as the gayest and most interesting romance can scarcely furnish; but for the old du Verney he was an excellent citizen, a truly manly genius, zealous for his country, full of liberal ideas, of grand and useful conceptions. He possessed pre-eminently all the talents which form the charm of society, he put into everything a piquant originality which made him more loved and prized than others. In verses or couplets which he composed, there was always a turn, an idea, a striking feature, another would have missed. His conversation, mixed with new ideas, jests, lively but never bitter, unexpected repartee, always founded upon reason, made him singularly attractive."