The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

The Paris air in the weeks ahead buzzed with anticipation. There would be a new play from the capital's favorite provocateur, Monsieur de Beaumarchais, coming soon. Gossip spread through salons and coffeehouses like autumn leaves through a tornado. The new play, entitled The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro, would be, rumor had it, bolder, more shocking, than his last. It was the only subject people could speak about even in passing in competition with the sensational arrests conducted by the King at the Treasury.

Art, isolated in Versailles, observed the buildup with the curiosity of a strategist watching his secret weapon being moved into place. Beaumarchais, with a lavish and utterly secret royal stipend, had worked with blinding speed. He had commandeered an exclusive theatre, recruited a team of Paris' first-rate actors, and run a dazzling word-of-mouth publicity drive so every man of power would be dying to secure himself an invitation for the opening.

The scandalous topic of the play was an open secret: a quick-witted, irresistibly sarcastic servant called Figaro is in head-to-head disagreement with his master, the powerfuI Count Almaviva, over the Count's attempt to enforce a feudal "right" to bed Figaro's bride. It was a frontal, comedic assault on aristocratic privileges and apparent immorality.

Art, of course, could not go. His presence would instantly give away his hand. So he despatched a skilled agent, a man with an exceptional memory for dialogue, to go and bring back a thorough report.

Premiere night, the theatre sold out. It was packed with a hand-selected cross-section of Parisian high society: progressive nobles who delighted in poking their uptight counterparts in the eye, wealthy bourgeois who could hardly wait to see their aristocratic betters satirized, and a group of influential intellectuals and philosophers for whom theatre served as a warzone for ideals.

The next morning's report on Art, reinforced later in the day with an ecstatic, triumphant account from Beaumarchais himself, presented a clear picture. The air had been electric since the opening of the curtains. The audience sat spellbound, suspended over each witty repartee and Byzantine plot development. They laughed with gusto as Figaro, the valet, effortlessly outmanipulated his noble master time after time. They whispered in horrified amusement over the Count's blatant corruption and hamfisted attempts to solidify his authority.

The last act's passionate, long monologue, delivered in the play's climax by Figaro, was where the performance simultaneously passed over from entertainment into a genuine cultural event. Alone on stage, the character unleashed his indignation against the injustices perpetrated by a system which had provided his master with everything and him with nothing.

He had laid down the important lines verbatim. "Since you are a powerful lord, you fancy you are a powerful genius!" cried Figaro, his words thundering with an enthusiasm that silenced the entire theatre. "You are a noble, you are rich, you are a rank, you are a function… you are so proud! What have you ever done to deserve all these? You went to the trouble of being born, and nothing else! While I, lost in the dark crowd, have had to bring into operation more science and calculation merely in order to keep breathing than has been spent in the government of all Spain for a century!"

The line was a spark added to a keg of gunpowder. For a moment, there was shocked silence. Then, the theater blew up. It wasn't applause; it was a scream, a deafening, scandalous ovation of women and men who felt the play was voicing a truth they'd only ever whispered in private.

The Old Guard in Versailles reacted with equal quickness, though a good deal greater outrage. They recognized in an instant just what the play was: a venomous dart thrust right into their very gut. They could not see in the foppish, decadent, and ultimately absurd Count Almaviva a fictional character, but a malignant caricature of themselves. The play sneered at their honor, questioned their right to power, and suggested that their servants were their equals, and in wit and virtue, their superiors.

The following day after the premiere, Vergennes requested an immediate audience. He entered Art's study, his usual refined disposition taken over with a cold, barely suppressed rage.

"Your Majesty," he began, with no pretense whatsoever toward pleasantry, his voice tense with indignation. "This... this play that all Paris speaks about is a travesty. It is a filth, a dangerious attack on the very foundations of our society's order. It encourages defiance, it approves uprising, and it holds your kingdom's nobility in common contempt. It must be banned immediately. Its author, this presumptuous watchmaker, requires a lesson he shall scarce remember. He deserves a position in the Bastille."

Art sat back in his chair, feigning shock and distress. He had been expecting this confrontation and had rehearsed his scene. He pulled up the HUD, double-checking his next move's political arithmetic.

Prompt: Ban The Marriage of Figaro and arrest Beaumarchais.

Outcome: NEGATIVE.

Cultural Influence: -5% (Major Setback). Your new weapon is destroyed.

Old Guard Popularity: +10%. They are appeased, but see you as pliable.

Third Estate/Bourgeoisie Popularity: -15%. Seen as a tyrant siding with aristocratic censorship. The public turns against you.

Beaumarchais Alliance: SEVERED.

He removed the screen from his thoughts. It could not be prohibited from being played. He could only defend his new weapon without calling it his.

"Ban it, Minister?" said Art, rubbing his chin in a pensive fashion, as if considering the proposal for the first time ever. "That is a very... drastic move in defense of a simple comedy, don't you think? I happened to see a summary of the story. It seems to be a harmless farce."

"Harmless?" Vergennes stuttered, his calm shattered. "It means a nobleman's servant is his moral and intellectual equal! It is poison in the common man's ear!"

"Perhaps," Art conceded with a placating hand. "But consider the impression, Minister. To outlaw a play based on no more than offended nobles' sensibilities would render me a feeble king, influenced and frightened of a group of Players in a play. It would make me a tyrant stifling free expression. Wouldn't it? Such a move would only tend to make the playwright a martyr and his humble play a banned fruit everyone would yearn to taste. We would make it ten times more famous and ten times more dangerous."

He let the logic sink in, seeing Vergennes' jaw set. Art had framed the argument in a language the minister understood: power and perception.

"Well, then, we do nothing?" Vergennes roared. "We simply allow this filth to continue?"

"Not nothing," said Art, now offering a "compromise" he had struck. "I, too, find some of the themes... distasteful. I will make my royal displeasure clear. I will instruct the official censors to demand a few token adjustments. A line softened somewhere, a word changed somewhere else. Just enough, in doing so, for us to be able to say the Crown is vigilant, yet enough, in doing so, for us not, in being so, to appear persecutory towards the author. Thus, we appear reasonable and proportionate, yet still get to provide the people with their little treats. We take the bite out of the scandal simply with our lack of treating it as one."

Vergennes was in a bind. Art's proposal was politics' darling. It allowed the Old Guard to hold their heads high, claim they got the King to do it, when in fact he had done nothing to keep the play's spirit from being spread. Demanding a total ban now would make him come across as unreasonable, an extremist. He had been totally outmaneuvered.

"Just as Your Majesty desires," responded Vergennes finally, his voice stiff with outrage. He bowed for a moment and he left the study.

Art permitted himself a small, grave smile. He had won in the second round. The "scandal" over the King's indignation and the superficial, inconsequential revisions only increased the appetite in the public. Tickets for The Marriage of Figaro became the hottest item in Paris. Its witty dialogue became buzzphrases in the salons. Its very thesis—that a man's worthiness depended on merit, not birth—began slowly to enter the cultural consciousness.

His HUD emitted a silent acknowledgement of his victory.

Cultural Influence: +2% (Successful Gambit).

Old Guard Hostility: +5% (Frustrated).

He had successfully protected his new asset. The cultural war had begun.