Chapter VII: Franklin's French Friends (1)

To the host of friends mentioned above, numerous as it was, another great addition was to be made when Franklin became one of our envoys to France. In the various Colonies of America, so unlike each other in many respects, in England, in Scotland, his liberal instincts and quick sympathies ran out into new social forms almost with the fluid ease of the melted tallow which he had poured, in his boyhood, into his father's candle moulds; but of all the impressions that he ever derived from any society, that which was made upon him by French society certifies most strikingly to the wonderful plasticity of his nature, under the pressure of new conditions. So permeated did he--one of the truest progenitors of distinctively American ideas and attributes, and one of the truest exponents of the robust Anglo-Saxon character--become with the genius of the French People that a Frenchman, Henri Martin, the historian, has declared that he was "of a mind altogether French in its grace and elasticity."

There was a time, of course, when Franklin, apart from the inveteracy of the old English prejudice, which believed that upon every pair of English legs marched three Frenchmen, had no good blood for the French because of the agony in which they had for so many years, with the aid of their savage friends, kept the colonial frontier. "I fancy that intriguing nation would like very well to meddle on occasion, and blow up the coals between Britain and her colonies; but I hope we shall give them no opportunity." This was his quiet comment even as late as 1767 in a letter to William Franklin upon the sedulous attentions recently paid to him by Monsieur Durand, the French plenipotentiary in London, whose masters were fully awake to the fact that the quarrel between Great Britain and her Colonies might be a pretty one from the point of view of French interests, and that in duels it is not the pistols but the seconds that kill. But this was politics. Long before Franklin crossed the Atlantic on his French mission, he had felt, during his visits to France in 1767 and 1769, the bewitching influence of social conditions perpetually enlivened and refreshed by the vivacity and inventive resource which were such conspicuous features of his own character. After his return from France in 1767, he wrote to D'Alibard: "The Time I spent in Paris, and in the improving Conversation and agreeable Society of so many learned and ingenious Men, seems now to me like a pleasing Dream, from which I was sorry to be awaked by finding myself again at London." These agreeable impressions were confirmed by his return to France in 1769. After stating in a letter to Dupont de Nemours in the succeeding year that he expected to return to America in the ensuing summer, he exclaimed, "Would to God I could take with me Messrs. Dupont, du Bourg, and some other French Friends with their good Ladies! I might then, by mixing them with my Friends in Philadelphia, form a little happy Society that would prevent my ever wishing again to visit Europe."

It was, therefore, to no entirely novel social conditions that Franklin was introduced when he found himself again in France in 1776. At any rate, no chameleon was ever quicker to absorb the color of his latest background. As time elapsed, nothing but his inability to write and speak French with the facility of a native-born Frenchman separated him in a social sense from the mass of French men and women, by whom he was admired, courted and flattered almost from the day that he set foot in France until the day that he was conveyed in one of the Queen's litters to the coast on his return to America. How far this assimilation was the deliberate achievement of a wise man, who never failed to act upon the principle that the best way of managing men is to secure their good will first, how far but the unconscious self-adjustment of a pliable disposition it is impossible to say. But there can be no doubt about the amazing sympathy with which Franklin entered into the social life of the French people. Beneath the gay, pleasure-loving exterior that he presented to French society, there was always the thought of that land over-sea, so singularly blessed by Providence with material comfort and equality of fortune, with the general diffusion of education and enlightenment, and with political institutions bound to the past only by the wisdom of experience. Always beneath that exterior, too, was a glowing resentment of the wrongs that England had inflicted upon America, an enthusiastic sense of the "glorious cause" in which America was engaged, and a resolution as fixed as the eye of Nemesis that no hand but the hand of America itself should fill out the outlines of the imperial destiny, in which he had once been so eagerly, even pathetically, desirous that England should share. But these were thoughts and purposes reserved for the hours of business, or of confidential intercourse with his American compatriots, or for such moments as the one when he heard of the fall of Philadelphia and the surrender of Burgoyne. In his purely social relations with the French People, he preserved only enough of his republican ideas, dress and manners to give a certain degree of piquancy to his _ensemble_.

He adopted French usages and customs; he composed exquisite little stories and dialogues in the French manner, and, old as he was, he made love like a French _galant_. "As it is always fair Weather in our Parlours, it is at Paris always Peace," he wrote to the Chevalier de la Luzerne, and this remark comes home to us with full force when we remember with what unrestrained gaiety of heart, notwithstanding the shudder sent through him at times by the American War, he enjoyed the social life of Paris. Long before he left France, he had learnt to love the country and its people with a sincere, fervent attachment. After saying in a letter to Josiah Quincy, that the French had certainly advanced in politeness and civility many degrees beyond the English, he paid them this compliment:

I find them here a most amiable Nation to live with.
The Spaniards are by common Opinion suppos'd to be
cruel, the English proud, the Scotch insolent, the
Dutch Avaricious, &c., but I think the French have no
national Vice ascrib'd to them. They have some
Frivolities, but they are harmless. To dress their
Heads so that a Hat cannot be put on them, and then
wear their Hats under their Arms, and to fill their
Noses with Tobacco, may be called Follies, perhaps, but
they are not Vices. They are only the effects of the
tyranny of Custom. In short, there is nothing wanting
in the Character of a Frenchman, that belongs to that
of an agreeable and worthy Man. There are only some
Trifles surplus, or which might be spared.

These, however, were but frigid words in comparison with those subsequently employed by him in relation to a country, where, to use his own language, everybody strove to make him happy. "The French are an amiable People to live with," he told his old friend, Captain Nathaniel Falconer, "They love me, & I love them." In a later letter to William Franklin, he said, "I am here among a People that love and respect me, a most amiable Nation to live with; and perhaps I may conclude to die among them; for my Friends in America are dying off, one after another, and I have been so long abroad, that I should now be almost a Stranger in my own Country."

Nor did the love for France that he took back with him to the United States grow at all fainter with absence and the flow of time. To the Duc de la Rochefoucauld he wrote from Philadelphia, "I love France, I have 1000 Reasons for doing so: And whatever promotes or impedes her Happiness affects me as if she were my Mother." To Madame Lavoisier he used terms that communicate to us an even more vivid conception of the ambrosial years that he had passed in France.

These [he said, referring to his good fortune in his
old age in its different aspects] are the blessings of
God, and depend on his continued goodness; yet all do
not make me forget Paris, and the nine years' happiness
I enjoyed there, in the sweet society of a people whose
conversation is instructive, whose manners are highly
pleasing, and who, above all the nations of the world,
have, in the greatest perfection, the art of making
themselves beloved by strangers. And now, even in my
sleep, I find, that the scenes of all my pleasant
dreams are laid in that city, or in its
neighbourhood.[38]

Mingled with these pleasant dreams, it is safe to say were some of the lively and charming women to whose embraces he submitted, if his sister Jane was not misinformed, in a spirit quite remote from that of the rigors of penance.

You mention the Kindness of the French Ladies to me [he
wrote to Elizabeth Partridge, whose husband was the
superintendent of the almshouse in Boston], I must
explain that matter. This is the civilest nation upon
Earth. Your first Acquaintances endeavour to find out
what you like, and they tell others. If 'tis understood
that you like Mutton, dine where you will you find
Mutton. Somebody, it seems, gave it out that I lov'd
Ladies; and then everybody presented me their Ladies
(or the Ladies presented themselves) to be _embrac'd_,
that is to have their Necks kiss'd. For as to kissing
of Lips or Cheeks it is not the Mode here, the first,
is reckon'd rude, & the other may rub off the Paint.
The French Ladies have however 1000 other ways of
rendering themselves agreeable; by their various
Attentions and Civilities, & their sensible
Conversation. 'Tis a delightful People to live with.

I hope, however [he wrote to another correspondent after denying a story about himself], to preserve, while I stay, the regard you mention of the French ladies; for their society and conversation, when I have time to enjoy them, are extremely agreeable.

And that the French ladies found his society and conversation extremely agreeable no one can well doubt who has had occasion to become familiar with the scented missives, full of artful coquetry, that were addressed by many fair hands to "tres cher papa," or "Dear American papa" or "amiable papa," when he was in the land where somebody had been so considerate as to give it out that he liked ladies. At times, these notes run along in mingled French and English as if the writers were determined to bring to bear upon him the blandishments not only of the former language but of his own familiar tongue besides. "Je vous envoye a sweet kiss, dear Papa, envoyez moi en revanche, un Mot de Reponse," was one languishing request. Even Franklin's bad French mattered but little when a woman, Madame Brillon, whom the daughter of Abigail Adams pronounced "one of the handsomest women in France," could write to him, "It is always very good French to say, 'Je vous aime.' My heart always goes out to meet this word when you say it to me." From such words as these to his saying that the best master of languages is a mistress the transition was not very difficult.[39]

It was at Passy, then a suburb of Paris, that Franklin resided during the eight and a half years that he was one of our representatives in France. His surroundings were thus described by him in reply to a question from Mrs. Stevenson:

You wish to know how I live. It is in a fine House,
situated in a neat Village, on high Ground, half a Mile
from Paris, with a large Garden to walk in. I have
abundance of Acquaintance, dine abroad Six days in
seven. Sundays I reserve to dine at home, with such
Americans as pass this Way; and I then have my grandson
Ben, with some other American Children from his school.

The house mentioned by Franklin was known as the Basse Cour de Monsieur Le Ray de Chaumont, and had originally, with the inscription over its door, "Se sta bene, non si muove" not been unknown to fame as the Hotel de Valentinois. Indeed, John Locke, who visited Paris in 1679, declared that it was among the twenty-four _belles maisons_ in Paris that best rewarded the curiosity of the stranger at that time. The circumstances, under which it passed into the possession of Franklin, were another proof of the flaming zeal with which many of the foremost inhabitants of France espoused the cause of the Colonies. Chaumont was Grand Maitre des Eaux et Forets de France and Intendant Honoraire des Invalides, a friend of the Duc de Choiseul, and a man of large wealth, with a chateau on the Loire as well as the mansion at Passy, of which the building occupied by Franklin was a part. In his generous enthusiasm for American liberty, he declined a post in the French Ministry, offered to him by Choiseul, because he thought that by declining it he might be a more useful intermediary between America and the French Government. When John Adams came to Passy, and found a home under the same roof with Franklin, he felt obliged to write to Chaumont asking him to consider what rent they should pay to him for the use of his house and furniture. Every part of Chaumont's conduct towards him and Americans in general, and in all their affairs, he said, had been polite and obliging, as far as he had an opportunity of observing, and he had no doubt it would continue, but it was not reasonable that they should occupy such an elegant mansion without any compensation to the owner, and it was not right that they should live at too great or at too uncertain an expense to their constituents. The reply of Chaumont was worthy of a paladin of Ancient France. "When I consecrated my home to Dr. Franklin and his associates who might live with him," he said, "I made it fully understood that I should expect no compensation, because I perceived that you had need of all your means to send to the succor of your country, or to relieve the distresses of your countrymen escaping from the chains of their enemies." This is a world, however, in which it is too much to expect an absolutely free gift of house rent, and the answer of Chaumont to John Adams does not altogether agree with the version of the matter given by Franklin in a letter to Robert R. Livingston, in which he said that Chaumont had originally proposed to leave the article of rent unsettled until the end of the war, and then to accept for it a piece of American land from the Congress such as they might judge equivalent. Considering the serious uncertainty as to whether there would then be any Congress, this was quite generous enough. It is painful to relate, however, that Chaumont engaged so recklessly in the hazardous business of shipping supplies to America for the patriot army as to become involved in pecuniary embarrassments, which produced some degree of temporary constraint in his intercourse with Franklin. "I find that in these Affairs with him, a Bargain tho' ever so clearly express'd signifies nothing," wrote Franklin in a moment of disgust with his volatility to Jonathan Williams. A few months before, Franklin had made this entry in a journal kept by him during a brief portion of his residence at Passy. "Visit at M. de Chaumont's in the evening; found him cold and dry." But before Franklin left France, the old cordiality of intercourse appears to have been fully re-established, for we find the two dining with each other again, and besides, when Franklin was on his way to the seacoast, on his return to America, Chaumont and his daughter accompanied him part of the way. The entire restoration of good feeling between the two men is also shown in the letters and conduct of Franklin after his return to America. Chaumont was one of the group of French friends favored by him with gifts of the Franklin Myrtle Wax Soap, "thought," he said, "to be the best in the World, for Shaving & for washing Chinces, and other things of delicate Colours." In one of his letters from Philadelphia, Franklin tells Chaumont that Donatien Le Ray Chaumont, the Younger, who had come over to America to press certain claims of the elder Chaumont against the United States, was out at that time with his "son Bache" and some others on a hunt. It is in this letter, by the way, that he said of Finck, his _maitre d' hotel_ at Passy, who was pretending that he was not wholly paid, "He was continually saying of himself, Je suis honnete homme, Je suis honnete homme. But I always suspected he was mistaken; and so it proves." In another letter, he wrote to Chaumont, "I have frequently the Pleasure of seeing your valuable Son, whom I love as my own," and in this letter he sent his love to all Chaumont's children in France, one of whom he was in the habit of addressing as "ma femme," another as "ma chere amie," and still another as "mon enfant." "Present my affectionate Respects to Madame de Chaumont, and Love to Mad'e Foucault, to ma Femme, ma chere Amie, et mon Enfant," was one of his messages to Chaumont. This Madame Foucault was the favorite mentioned by William Temple Franklin, when he wrote to his grandfather some nine months after the latter found the manner of Chaumont "cold and dry," "All the family (the Chaumonts) send their love to you, and the beautiful M'e Foucault accompanys hers with an English kiss." A challenge of that kind was always promptly caught up by Franklin. "Thanks to Mad'e Foucault," he replied, "for her kindness in sending me the Kiss. It was grown cold by the way. I hope for a warm one when we meet."

An amusing observation of Madame Chaumont, which has its value, as an illustration of eighteenth-century manners in France, is quoted in a letter from Franklin to John Paul Jones:

L'Abbe Rochon had just been telling me & Madame
Chaumont [wrote Franklin] that the old Gardiner & his
Wife had complained to the Curate, of your having
attack'd her in the Garden about 7 o'clock the evening
before your Departure, and attempted to ravish her
relating all the Circumstances, some of which are not
fit for me to write. The serious Part of it was yt
three of her Sons were determin'd to kill you, if you
had not gone off; the Rest occasioned some Laughing;
for the old Woman being one of the grossest, coarsest,
dirtiest & ugliest that we may find in a thousand,
Madame Chaumont said it gave a high Idea of the
Strength of Appetite & Courage of the Americans. A Day
or two after, I learnt yt it was the femme de
Chambre of Mademoiselle Chaumont who had disguis'd
herself in a Suit, I think, of your Cloaths, to divert
herself under that Masquerade, as is customary the last
evening of Carnival: and that meeting the old Woman in
the Garden, she took it into her Head to try her
Chastity, which it seems was found Proof.

The wit of Madame de Chaumont, however, shows to better advantage in connection with another incident. One of Franklin's friends was Mademoiselle Passy, a beautiful girl, whom he was in the habit of calling, so John Adams tells us, "his favorite, and his flame, and his love," which flattered the family, and did not displease the young lady. When her engagement to the Marquis de Tonnerre was announced, Madame de Chaumont exclaimed to Franklin, "Helas! tous les conducteurs de Monsieur Franklin n'ont pas empeche le tonnerre de tomber sur Mademoiselle de Passy." Franklin himself was entirely too good a conductor of wit not to pass a thing like this on.

It gives me great Pleasure Madam my respected
Neighbour, [he said in a letter to Madame de
Boulainvilliers, the mother of the Semele upon whom the
Marquis was about to descend] to learn that our lovely
Child is soon to be married with your Approbation &
that we are not however to be immediately depriv'd of
her Company. I assure you I shall make no Use of my
Paratonnerre [lightning-rod] to prevent this Match.

Franklin's republican simplicity began and ended with his unpowdered hair, worn straight, and covered with a cap of marten fur, and his russet dress. At Passy, he lived in a manner that Vergennes, accustomed to the splendor and profusion of European Courts, might well call modest, but which was quite as lavish as was consistent with the reputation of a plain democrat or of a veritable philosopher. Under the terms of his contract with his _maitre d'hotel_, the latter was to provide _dejeuner_ and dinner daily for five persons. The _dejeuner_ was to consist of bread and butter, honey, and coffee or chocolate with sugar, and the dinner of a joint of beef, or veal or mutton, followed by fowl or game with "deux plats d'entremets, deux plats de legumes, et un plat de Pattisserie, avec hors d'oeuvre, de Beurres, cornichons, radis, etc." For dessert, there were to be "deux de Fruit en hiver et 4 en Ete." There were also to be at dinner: "Deux compottes, un assiette de fromage, un de Biscuits, et un de bonbons," and "Des Glaces, 2 fois par Semaine en Ete et un fois en Hyver." The cost of this service per month was 720 livres. There was also an allowance of 240 livres per month for nine domestic servants, and of 400 livres per month for extra dinners for guests; making the total monthly cost of Franklin's table 1360 livres. And there was no lack of good wine, red or white, _ordinaire_ or _extraordinaire_. In 1778, there were 1180 bottles of wine and rum in the cellar at Passy, and, some four and one half years later, there were 1203. Franklin also maintained a carriage and coachman at a cost of 5018 livres per year. By a resolution of Congress, the salaries of the different Commissioners of the United States in Europe were fixed at 11,428 livres tournois per annum, in addition to their reasonable expenses, and the total expenses of Franklin in France are computed by Smyth to have been about $15,000 per annum, a moderate sum, indeed, in comparison with the amount necessary to sustain the dignity of our Minister to France at the present time. Nevertheless, the _menage_ at Passy was luxurious enough for him to be warned that it had been described at home by some of his guests in such terms as to provoke popular censure on the part of his countrymen.

They must be contented for the future [Franklin said in
a letter to John Adams] as I am, with plain beef and
pudding. The readers of Connecticut newspapers ought
not to be troubled for any more accounts of our
extravagance. For my own part, if I could sit down to
dinner on a piece of excellent salt pork and pumpkin, I
would not give a farthing for all the luxuries of
Paris.

After this time, Franklin did not keep such an open house as before, considerably to the relief of his gout. Previously, if we may believe John Adams, he had made a practice of inviting everybody to dine with him on Sunday at Passy. Sometimes, his company was made up exclusively, or all but exclusively, of Americans, and sometimes partly of Americans, and partly of French, and, now and then, there was an Englishman or so. Miss Adams mentions a "sumptuous dinner," at which the members of the Adams family, the Marquis de la Fayette and his wife, Lord Mount Morris, an Irish Volunteer, Dr. Jeffries, and Paul Jones were guests. Another dinner is mentioned by her at which all the guests were Americans, except M. Brillon, who had dropped in, he said, "a demander un dine a Pere Franklin." A whimsical story is told by Jefferson of still another dinner at which one half of the guests were Americans and one half French.

Among the last [he says] was the Abbe (Raynal). During
the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the
degeneracy of animals, and even of men, in America, and
urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor at length
noticing the accidental stature and position of his
guests, at table, "Come," says he, "M. L'Abbe, let us
try this question by the fact before us. We are here
one half Americans, and one half French, and it happens
that the Americans have placed themselves on one side
of the table, and our French friends are on the other.
Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side
nature has degenerated." It happened that his American
guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others
of the finest stature and form; while those of the
other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbe
himself, particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried
the appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of
exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a
conspicuous one.

Not the least interesting of the guests that Franklin drew around his table at Passy were lads, who had a claim upon his notice, either because they were the sons, or grandsons, of friends of his, or because they were friends of his grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. In a letter to Doctor Cooper, Franklin tells him that his grandson, Samuel Cooper Johonnot appeared a very promising lad, in whom he thought that the doctor would have much satisfaction, and was well on the preceding Sunday, when he had had the pleasure of his company to dinner with Mr. Adams' sons, and some other young Americans. There is still in existence a letter from John Quincy Adams, then a boy of eleven, to Franklin, which indicates that the latter had quite won his heart, though, do what he might, he could never win the heart of the elder Adams.

It was a brilliant society, to which Franklin was introduced, after the first reserve of the French Court, before its recognition of American independence, was laid aside. He had the magpie habit of hoarding every scrap of paper or cardboard, that bore the imprint of his existence, and Smyth, the latest editor of Franklin's works, has, with his usual diligence, compiled the names that appear most frequently on the visiting cards, found among Franklin's papers. They are such significant names as those of La Duchesse d'Enville, her son Le Duc de la Rochefoucauld, M. Turgot, Duc de Chaulnes, Comte de Crillon, Vicomte de Sarsfield, M. Brisson, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Comte de Milly, Prince des Deuxponts, Comte d'Estaing, Marquis de Mirabeau and M. Beaugeard, Treasurer of the State of Brittany.

The Diary of John Adams reveals Franklin and himself dining on one occasion with La Duchesse d'Enville, and "twenty of the great people of France," on another with M. Chalut, one of the farmers-general, and the old Marshal Richelieu, and "a vast number of other great company," on another with the Prince de Tingry, Duc de Beaumont, of the illustrious House of Montmorency, and on another with La Duchesse d'Enville, along with her daughter and granddaughter, and dukes, abbots and the like so numerous that the list ends with a splutter of et ceteras. "Dukes, and bishops and counts, etc." are the overburdened words with which Adams closes his list of the guests at a dinner given by Vergennes, the minister of Louis XVI.

But, after all, it was the circle of intimate friends, to which Franklin promised to introduce John Jay on the arrival of Jay in France, that constitutes the chief interest of the former's social life in France. Three of these friends were Madame Helvetius, Madame Brillon and the Comtesse d'Houdetot. With Madame Helvetius, he dined every Saturday at Auteuil, with Madame Brillon twice a week at the home of her husband, not far from his, and with the Comtesse d'Houdetot frequently at Sanois, in the Valley of Montmorency. Madame Helvetius was known to her friends as "Our Lady of Auteuil." She was the widow of Helvetius, the philosopher, who had left her a handsome fortune, amassed by him when one of the farmers-general. In testimony of her affection for him, she kept under glass, on a table in her bedroom, a monument erected to his memory, with his picture hung above it. Her _salon_ was one of the best-known in France, and it was maintained on such a sumptuous scale that, in one of his letters, after his return to America, Franklin told her that often in his dreams he placed himself by her side on one of her thousand sofas. It was at Auteuil that he passed some of his happiest hours in France, plying its mistress with flattery and badinage, and enjoying the music of her two daughters, known to the household as "the Stars," and the conversation of her friends, the younger Cabanis, and the Abbes Morellet and de la Roche. One of the amusements of the inner circle at Auteuil was to read aloud to each other little trifles, full of point and grace which they had composed. Thus, though after Franklin had returned to America, was ushered into the world the Abbe Morellet's _Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvetius from her Cats_--animals which appear to have had a position in her home as assured as that of "the Stars" or the Abbes themselves; and several of the wittiest of the productions, which Franklin called his Bagatelles, originated in the same way. If homage, seasoned with delightful humor and wit, could have kept the mistress of Auteuil, at the age of sixty, from incurring the malice of the female contemporary, who, we are told by Miss Adams, compared her with the ruins of Palmyra, that of Franklin would assuredly have done it. When she complained that he had not been to see her for a long time, he evaded the reproach of absence by replying, "I am waiting, Madame, until the nights are longer." Whatever others might think, she was to him, "his fair friend at Auteuil," who still possessed "health and personal charms." What cleverer application could there be than this of the maxim of Hesiod that the half is sometimes more than the whole:

Very dear Friend, we shall have some good music
to-morrow morning at breakfast. Can you give me the
pleasure of sharing in it. The time will be half past
ten. This is a problem that a mathematician will
experience some trouble in explaining; In sharing other
things, each of us has only one portion; but in sharing
pleasures with you, my portion is doubled. The part is
more than the whole.

On another occasion, when Madame Helvetius reminded Franklin that she expected to meet him at Turgot's, he replied, "Mr. Franklin never forgets any party at which Madame Helvetius is expected. He even believes that, if he were engaged to go to Paradise this morning, he would pray for permission to remain on earth until half-past one, to receive the embrace promised him at the Turgots."

Poor Deborah seems altogether lost, and forgotten when we read these lines that he wrote to the Abbe de la Roche:

I have often remarked, when reading the works of M.
Helvetius, that, although we were born and reared in
two countries so remote from each other, we have
frequently had the same thoughts; and it is a
reflection very flattering to me that we have loved the
same studies, and, as far as we have both known them,
the same friends, and the same woman.

But the image of Deborah was not so completely effaced from Franklin's memory that he could not conjure up her shade for a moment to excite a retaliatory impulse in the breast which he had found insensible to his proposals of marriage, serious, or affected. If Madame Helvetius, who was illiterate like Deborah, did not appreciate the light, aerial humor of the following dream from the pen of the author of _The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams_, we may be sure that her witty Abbes did:

Mortified by your cruel resolution, declared by you so
positively yesterday evening, to remain single the rest
of your life, out of respect for your dear husband, I
retired to my home, threw myself upon my bed, and
dreamt that I was dead and in the Elysian Fields.

I was asked whether I wished to see any persons in
particular. "Conduct me to the philosophers," I
replied. "There are two who live here close by in this
garden; they are very good neighbors and very friendly
with each other," I was told. "Who are they?" "Socrates
and Helvetius." "I esteem them both immensely, but let
me see Helvetius first, because I understand a little
French, but not a word of Greek." He received me with
much courtesy, having known me, he said, by reputation
for some time past. He asked me a thousand questions
about the war, the present state of religion, of
liberty, and politics in France. "You do not ask me
then," I said, "anything about your dear _amie_, Madame
Helvetius; yet she loves you still exceedingly, and I
was at her home only an hour ago." "Ah," said he, "you
bring back to me my past happiness, but it must be
forgotten to be happy here. During several of my first
years here, I thought only of her, but at length I am
consoled. I have taken another wife, one as much like
her as I could find. She is not, it is true, quite so
handsome, but she has as much good sense, and much
_esprit_, and she loves me infinitely. Her continuous
aim is to please me, and she is at this moment gone to
look up the best nectar and ambrosia to regale me with
this evening; stay here awhile, and you will see her."
"I perceive," said I, "that your former _amie_ is more
faithful than you are; for she has had several good
offers, but has refused them all. I confess that I
myself have loved her to distraction, but she was
obdurate, and has rejected me peremptorily for love of
you." "I pity your misfortune," said he, "for in truth
she is a good and handsome woman, and very lovable."
"But are not the Abbe de la R---- and the Abbe M----
still some times at her house?" "Yes, to be sure, for
she has not lost a single one of your friends." "If you
had induced the Abbe M----(with some good coffee and
cream) to say a word for you, you would, perhaps, have
succeeded; for he is as subtle a reasoner as Duns
Scotus or St. Thomas; he marshals his arguments in such
good order that they become almost irresistible. And if
the Abbe de la R---- had been induced (by some fine
edition of an old classic) to say a word against you,
that would have been better; for I have always observed
that when he advised her to do anything she had a very
strong inclination to do the reverse." As he was saying
this, the new Madame Helvetius entered with the nectar,
and I recognized her instantly as my former American
_amie_, Mrs. Franklin. I laid claim to her but she said
to me coldly: "I was a good wife to you for forty-nine
years and four months, almost a half century; be
content with that. I have formed a new connection here
which will last to eternity." Indignant at this refusal
of my Eurydice, I at once resolved to quit those
ungrateful shades, and to return to this good world,
and to gaze again upon the sun and you. Here I am; let
us avenge ourselves.

It is an animated picture, too, that Franklin strikes off of Our Lady of Auteuil in a letter to Cabanis, when the latter had been absent for a time from Auteuil:

We often talk of you at Auteuil, where everybody loves
you. I now and then offend our good lady who can not
long retain her displeasure, but, sitting in state on
her sopha, extends graciously her long, handsome arm,
and says "la; baisez ma main: Je vous pardonne," with
all the dignity of a sultaness. She is as busy as ever,
endeavoring to make every creature about her happy,
from the Abbes down thro' all ranks of the family to
the birds and Poupon.

Poupon was one of the fair lady's eighteen cats. This letter ends with the request that Cabanis present to his father the writer's thanks to him for having gotten so valuable a son.

A lively note to Cabanis is in the same vein:

M. Franklin risen, washed, shaved, combed, beautified
to the highest degree, of which he is capable, entirely
dressed, and on the point of going out, with his head
full of the four Mesdames Helvetius, and of the sweet
kisses that he proposes to snatch from them, is much
mortified to find the possibility of this happiness
being put off until next Sunday. He will exercise as
much patience as he can, hoping to see one of these
ladies at the home of M. de Chaumont Wednesday. He will
be there in good time to see her enter with that grace
and dignity which charmed him so much seven weeks ago
in the same place. He even plans to seize her there,
and to keep her at his home for the rest of her life.
His remaining three Mesdames Helvetius at Auteuil can
suffice for the canaries and the Abbes.

Another note to Cabanis illustrates how readily pleasantry of this kind ran in the eighteenth century into gross license:

M. Franklin is sorry to have caused the least hurt to
those beautiful tresses that he always regards with
pleasure. If that Lady likes to pass her days with him,
he would like as much to pass his nights with her; and
since he has already given many of his days to her,
although he had such a small remnant of them to give,
she would seem ungrateful to have never given him a
single one of her nights, which run continually to pure
waste, without promoting the good fortune of any one
except Poupon.

When the reader is told that this letter ended with the words, "to be shown to our Lady of Auteuil," his mind is not unprepared for the graphic description by Abigail Adams of a dinner at which Madame Helvetius was the central figure:

She entered the room with a careless, jaunty air; upon
seeing ladies who were strangers to her, she bawled
out, "Ah, mon Dieu, where is Franklin? Why did you not
tell me there were ladies here?" You must suppose her
speaking all this in French. "How I look!" said she,
taking hold of a chemise made of tiffany, which she had
on over a blue lutestring, and which looked as much
upon the decay as her beauty, for she was once a
handsome woman; her hair was frizzled; over it she had
a small straw hat, with a dirty gauze half-handkerchief
round it, and a bit of dirtier gauze than ever my maids
wore was bowed on behind. She had a black gauze scarf
thrown over her shoulders. She ran out of the room;
when she returned, the Doctor entered at one door, she
at the other; upon which she ran forward to him, caught
him by the hand, "Helas! Franklin;" then gave him a
double kiss, one upon each cheek, and another upon his
forehead. When we went into the room to dine, she was
placed between the Doctor and Mr. Adams. She carried on
the chief of the conversation at dinner, frequently
locking her hands into the Doctor's, and sometimes
spreading her arms upon the backs of both the
gentlemen's chairs, then throwing her arm carelessly
upon the Doctor's neck.

I should have been greatly astonished at this conduct,
if the good Doctor had not told me that in this lady I
should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from
affectation or stiffness of behaviour, and one of the
best women in the world. For this I must take the
Doctor's word; but I should have set her down for a
very bad one, although sixty years of age, and a widow.
I own I was highly disgusted, and never wish for an
acquaintance with any ladies of this cast. After
dinner, she threw herself upon a settee, where she
showed more than her feet. She had a little lapdog, who
was, next to the Doctor, her favorite. This she kissed,
and when he wet the floor she wiped it up with her
chemise. This is one of the Doctor's most intimate
friends, with whom he dines once every week, and she
with him. She is rich, and is my near neighbour; but I
have not yet visited her. Thus you see, my dear, that
manners differ exceedingly in different countries. I
hope however, to find among the French ladies manners
more consistent with my ideas of decency, or I shall be
a mere recluse.

This, of course, in part, was but the New England snowdrop expressing its disapproval of the full-blown red rose of France, but it is impossible for all the pigments in the picture, painted by the skilful hand of Abigail Adams, to have been supplied by the moral austerity of Puritanism. Miss Adams, we might add, followed up her mother's impression with a prim ditto in her journal: "Dined at Mr. Franklin's by invitation; a number of gentlemen and Madame Helvetius, a French lady sixty years of age. Odious indeed do our sex appear when divested of those ornaments, with which modesty and delicacy adorn us." But we suspect that the Doctor was right in saying that Madame Helvetius, free and tawdry as she seemed to Abigail Adams and her daughter, was one of the best women in the world; that is to say her world. We are told that, when she was convalescing from an illness, four hundred persons assembled at Auteuil to express the pleasure they felt at the prospect of her recovery. Beneath the noisy, lax manners, which Mrs. Adams delineates so mercilessly, there must have been another and a very different Madame Helvetius to have won such a tribute as the following from a man who had known what it was to be tenderly beloved by more than one pure, thoroughly refined and accomplished woman:

And now I mention your friends, let me tell you, that I
have in my way been trying to form some hypothesis to
account for your having so many, and of such various
kinds. I see that statesmen, philosophers, historians,
poets, and men of learning of all sorts are drawn
around you, and seem as willing to attach themselves to
you as straws about a fine piece of amber. It is not
that you make pretensions to any of their sciences; and
if you did, similarity of studies does not always make
people love one another. It is not that you take pains
to engage them; artless simplicity is a striking part
of your character. I would not attempt to explain it by
the story of the ancient, who, being asked why
philosophers sought the acquaintance of kings, and
kings not that of philosophers, replied that
philosophers knew what they wanted, which was not
always the case with kings. Yet thus far the comparison
may go, that we find in your sweet society that
charming benevolence, that amiable attention to oblige,
that disposition to please and be pleased, which we do
not always find in the society of one another. It
springs from you; it has its influence on us all, and
in your company we are not only pleased with you, but
better pleased with one another and ourselves.

There can be no doubt that the friendship between the two was a real, genuine sentiment. When Franklin was doubting whether he was not too old and decrepit to cross the Atlantic, she was one of the three friends who urged him to spend his last days in France, and live with them. It was hardly fair, therefore, when she exclaimed after the departure of Franklin from France, in the presence of Madame Brillon, "Ah, that great man, that dear man, we shall see him no more," for Madame Brillon to retort, "It is entirely your fault, Madame."

From Havre he sent back tender farewells to his "tres chere amie." They were awaiting, he said, their baggage and fellow-voyager, Mr. Houdon, the sculptor. "When they come, we shall quit France, the country of the world that I love the best; and I shall leave there my dear Helvetia. She can be happy there. I am not sure of being happy in America; but it is necessary for me to go there. Things seem to me to be badly arranged here below, when I see beings so well constituted to be happy together compelled to separate." Then after a message of friendship to "the Abbes the good Abbes," the _vale_ dies out in these fond words: "I do not tell you that I love you. I might be told that there was nothing strange or meritorious in that, because the whole world loves you. I only hope that you will always love me a little."

Nor did the separation worked by the Atlantic produce any change in these feelings. In the letters written by Franklin to Madame Helvetius, and the members of her circle, after his return to Philadelphia, there is the same spirit of affection for her and for them, as well as a wistful retrospect of his chats with her on her thousand sofas, his walks with her in her garden, and the repasts at her table, always seasoned by sound sense, sprightliness and friendship. One of his commissions seems to have been to obtain a cardinal red bird for the "good dame," as he calls her in a letter to the Abbe Morellet from Philadelphia. "The good Dame, whom we all love, and whose Memory I shall love and honour as long as I have any Existence," were his words. But the commission was difficult of execution. The Virginia cardinal, he wrote to the Abbe, was a tender bird that stood the sea but poorly. Several sent out to France for their dame by Mr. Alexander, in his tobacco ships, had never arrived, he understood, and, "unless a Friend was going in the Ship who would take more than common Care of them," he supposed, "one might send an hundred without landing one alive."

They would be very happy, I know [he said], if they
were once under her Protection; but they cannot come to
her, and she will not come to them. She may remember
the Offer I made her of 1,000 Acres of Woodland, out of
which she might cut a great Garden and have 1,000
Aviaries if she pleased. I have a large Tract on the
Ohio where Cardinals are plenty. If I had been a
Cardinal myself perhaps I might have prevail'd with
her.

In his efforts to transport the Cardinal, Franklin even enlisted the services of Mr. Paradise, who, if contemporary gossip is reliable, might well have pleaded the preoccupation imposed upon him of protecting himself from the beak of his own termagant wife. Madame Helvetius, however, was not so eager for a cardinal as not to be willing to wait until one could be brought over by a proper escort. "I am in no hurry at all," she wrote to Franklin; "I will wait; for I am not willing to be the death of these pretty creatures. I will wait." In this same letter, there is an amusing mixture of tenderness and banter. Declining health and advancing years, she said, would but enable them the sooner to meet again as well as to meet again those whom they had loved, she a husband and he a wife; "but I believe," she wipes the moisture from her eyes long enough to say, "that you who have been a rogue (_coquin_) will be restored to more than one."

From what we have said, it is plain enough that the friendship felt by Madame Helvetius for the Abbes Morellet and de la Roche was shared by Franklin. When he touched at Southampton, after leaving Havre, on his return to America, he wafted another fond farewell to Madame Helvetius; "I will always love you," he said, "think of me sometimes, and write sometimes to your B. F." This letter, too, contained the usual waggish reference to the Abbes. "Adieu, my very, very, very dear amie. Wish us a good voyage, and tell the good Abbes to pray for us, since that is their profession." The _Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvetius from her Cats_ was long ascribed to Franklin, but it was really written by the Abbe Morellet. After reading it, Franklin wrote to the Abbe that the rapidity, with which the good lady's eighteen cats were increasing, would, in time, make their cause insupportable, and that their friends should, therefore, advise them to submit voluntarily either to transportation or castration. How deeply the Abbe Morellet was attached to Franklin is feelingly revealed in the letters which he wrote to him after the latter had arrived safely in America; to say nothing of the Abbe's Memoirs.

May your days [he wrote in one of these letters] be
prolonged and be free from pain; may your friends long
taste the sweetness and the charm of your society, and
may those whom the seas have separated from you be
still happy in the thought that the end of your career
will be, as our good La Fontaine says, "the evening of
a fine day."

Then, after some political reflections, suggested by the liberal institutions of America, the Abbe indulges in a series of gay comments on the habit that their Lady of Auteuil had, in her excessive love of coffee, of robbing him of his share of the cream, on the vicious bulldog brought over by Temple to France from England and on the host of cats, that had multiplied in the woodhouse and woodyard at Auteuil, under the patronage of their mistress, and did nothing but keep their paws in their furred gowns, and warm themselves in the sun. Friends of liberty, these cats, the Abbe said, were entirely out of place under the governments of Europe. Nothing could be more suitable than to load a small vessel with them and ship them to America. Another letter from the Abbe concluded with these heartfelt words:

I shall never forget the happiness I have enjoyed in
knowing you, and seeing you intimately. I write to you
from Auteuil, seated in your arm-chair, on which I have
engraved, _Benjamin Franklin hic sedebat_, and having
by my side the little bureau, which you bequeathed to
me at parting, with a drawer full of nails to gratify
the love of nailing and hammering, which I possess in
common with you. But believe me, I have no need of all
these helps to cherish your endeared _remembrance_, and
to love you,

"Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos reget artus."

During their jolly intercourse in France, the Abbe Morellet and Franklin touched glasses in two highly convivial productions. On one of the anniversaries of the birth of Franklin, or of American liberty, the Abbe could not remember which, the Abbe composed a drinking song in honor of Franklin, and among the letters written by Franklin when he was in France was one to the Abbe in which wine is lauded in terms of humorous exaggeration. One of the verses of the Abbe's production refers to the American War, and has been translated in these words by Parton:

"Never did mankind engage
In a war with views more sage;
They seek freedom with design,
To drink plenty of French wine;
Such has been
The intent of Benjamin."

The other verses are no better and no worse, and the whole poem is even more inferior in wit to Franklin's letter to the Abbe than the _Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvetius from her Cats_, clever though it be, is to Franklin's _Journey to the Elysian Fields_. If we had nothing but these bibulous productions to judge by, we might infer that love of wine, quite as much as love of Madame Helvetius was the tie of connection between the Abbe Morellet and Franklin. Indeed, in the letter to Franklin with respect to the cats, the Abbe was quite as candid about expressing his partiality for one form of spirits as Franklin was in his unblushing eulogy of wine. He did not know, he said, what duties his cats, in the unsettled condition of the commercial relations between France and the United States, would be made to pay on arriving at Philadelphia; "and then," he continued, "if my vessel should find nothing to load with among you but grain, it could not touch at our islands to take in sugar, or to bring me back good rum either, which I love much."