Chapter X: Pleasures and Diplomacy in France

Congress not only refused to recall Franklin, but relieved him entirely of the presence of Lee and Izard, so that the remaining six years of his service were peaceful and can be very briefly described. The improvement in the management of the embassy which immediately followed shows what a serious mistake the previous arrangement had been. Left entirely to his own devices, and master of the situation, he began the necessary reforms of his own accord, had complete books of account prepared, and managed the business without difficulty.

It is curious to read of the diverse functions the old man of seventy-four had to perform in this infancy of our diplomatic service. He was a merchant, banker, judge of admiralty, consul, director of the navy, ambassador to France, and negotiator with England for the exchange of prisoners and for peace, in addition to attending to any other little matter, personal or otherwise, which our representatives to other countries or the individual States of the Union might ask of him. The crudeness of the situation is revealed when we remember that not only was Congress obtaining loans of money and supplies of arms in Europe, but several of the States were doing the same thing, and it was often rather difficult for Franklin to assist them all without discrimination or injustice.

Paul Jones and the other captains of our navy who were cruising against British commerce on that side of the Atlantic made their head-quarters in French ports, and were necessarily under the direction of Franklin because the great distance made it impossible to communicate with Congress without months of delay. That they were lively sailors we may judge from the exploits of the "Black Prince," which in three months on the English coast took thirty-seven prizes, and brought in seventy-five within a year. Franklin had to act as a court of admiralty in the matter of prizes and their cargoes, settle disputes between the officers and men, quiet discontent about their pay by advancing money, decide what was to be done with mutineers, and see that ships were refitted and repaired. A couple of quotations from one of his letters to Congress will give some idea of his duties:

"In the mean time, I may just mention some particulars of our
disbursements. Great quantities of clothing, arms, ammunition,
and naval stores, sent from time to time; payment of bills from
Mr. Bingham, one hundred thousand livres; Congress bills in
favor of Haywood & Co., above two hundred thousand; advanced to
Mr. Ross, about twenty thousand pounds sterling; paid Congress
drafts in favor of returned officers, ninety-three thousand and
eighty livres; to our prisoners in England, and after their
escape to help them home, and to other Americans here in
distress, a great sum, I cannot at present say how much;
supplies to Mr. Hodge for fitting out Captain Conyngham, very
considerable; for the freight of ships to carry over the
supplies, great sums; to Mr. William Lee and Mr. Izard, five
thousand five hundred pounds sterling; and for fitting the
frigates _Raleigh_, _Alfred_, _Boston_, _Providence_,
_Alliance_, _Ranger_, &c., I imagine not less than sixty or
seventy thousand livres each, taken one with another; and for
the maintenance of the English prisoners, I believe, when I get
in all the accounts, I shall find one hundred thousand livres
not sufficient, having already paid above sixty-five thousand on
that article. And now, the drafts of the treasurer of the loans
coming very fast upon me, the anxiety I have suffered, and the
distress of mind lest I should not be able to pay them, have for
a long time been very great indeed."

* * * * *

"With regard to the fitting out of ships, receiving and
disposing of cargoes, and purchasing of supplies, I beg leave to
mention, that, besides my being wholly unacquainted with such
business, the distance I am from the ports renders my having
anything to do with it extremely inconvenient. Commercial agents
have indeed been appointed by Mr. William Lee; but they and the
captains are continually writing for my opinion or orders, or
leave to do this or that, by which much time is lost to them,
and much of mine taken up to little purpose, from my ignorance.
I see clearly, however, that many of the captains are exorbitant
in their demands, and in some cases I think those demands are
too easily complied with by the agents, perhaps because the
commissions are in proportion to the expense. I wish, therefore,
the Congress would appoint the consuls they have a right to
appoint by the treaty, and put into their hands all that sort of
employment. I have in my desk, I suppose, not less than fifty
applications from different ports, praying the appointment, and
offering to serve gratis for the honor of it, and the advantage
it gives in trade; but I imagine, that, if consuls are
appointed, they will be of our own people from America, who, if
they should make fortunes abroad, might return with them to
their country."

He was, in fact, deciding questions and assuming responsibilities which with other nations and afterwards with our own belonged to the home government. He had great discretionary power, an instance of which may be given in connection with the subject which was then agitating European countries, of "free ships, free goods." He wrote to Congress, telling that body how the matter stood:

"Whatever may formerly have been the law of nations, all the
neutral powers at the instance of Russia seem at present
disposed to change it, and to enforce the rule that _free ships
shall make free goods_, except in the case of contraband.
Denmark, Sweden, and Holland have already acceded to the
proposition, and Portugal is expected to follow. France and
Spain, in their answers, have also expressed their approbation
of it. I have, therefore, instructed our privateers to bring in
no more neutral ships, as such prizes occasion much litigation,
and create ill blood."

He did not know whether Congress would approve of this new rule of law, but he took his chances. He was not the first person to suggest the principle of "free ships, free goods," nor was he a prominent advocate of it, as has sometimes been implied; for his letter shows that Russia had suggested this improvement in the rules of international law, and that other nations were accepting it. He, however, urged on a number of occasions that war should be confined exclusively to regularly organized armies and fleets, that privateering should be abolished, that merchant vessels should be free from capture even by men-of-war, and that fishermen, farmers, and all who were engaged in supplying the necessaries of life should be allowed to pursue their avocations unmolested. The world has not yet caught up with this suggestion.

The great difficulty during the last two or three years of the Revolution was the want of money. The supplies sent out by Beaumarchais and Deane in the early part of the struggle merely served to start it. In the long run expenses increased enormously, the resources of the country were drained, the paper money depreciated with terrible rapidity, and we were compelled to continue borrowing from France or Holland. We borrowed principal and then borrowed more to pay the interest on the principal, and a large part of this business passed through Franklin's hands.

He persuaded the French government to lend, and then to lend again to pay interest. He was regarded as the source from which all the money was to come. Congress drew on him, John Jay in Spain drew on him, he had to pay salaries and the innumerable expenses appertaining to the fitting out and repairing of ships and the exchange of prisoners. These calls upon him were made often from a long distance, with a sort of blind confidence that he would in some way manage to meet them. A captain in the West Indies would run his ship into a port to be careened, refitted, and supplied, and coolly draw on him for the expense. It was extremely dangerous sometimes to refuse to accept a bill presented to him, and, as he said to Congress, if a single draft for interest on a loan went to protest there would be "dreadful consequences of ruin to our public credit both in America and Europe."

He suffered enough anxiety and strain to have destroyed some men. When Jay went to Spain in 1780, Congress was so sure he would obtain money from that monarchy that it drew on him. But as Jay could not get a cent, he forwarded the drafts to Franklin, who in reply wrote, "the storm of bills which I found coming upon us both has terrified and vexed me to such a degree that I have been deprived of sleep, and so much indisposed by continual anxiety as to be rendered almost incapable of writing." He would have gone under in this storm if he had not persuaded the French government to come to his rescue.

He was also from time to time receiving all sorts of proposals of peace from emissaries or agents of the British government; and he had a long correspondence on this subject with David Hartley, who helped him to arrange the exchange of prisoners in England. Nearly all these proposals contained a trap of some kind, as that we should break our alliance with France and then England would treat with us, or that there should be a peace without a definite recognition of independence; and some of them may have been intended to entrap Franklin himself. It was, in any event, most dangerous and delicate work, for it was corresponding with the public enemy. Most men in Franklin's position would have been compelled to drop it entirely, for fear of becoming involved in some serious difficulty; for it was suspected, if not actually proved, that persons connected with our own embassy in France were using their official knowledge to speculate in stocks in England. But Franklin came through it all unscathed.

He was much annoyed by numerous applications from people who wished to serve in the American army. Most of them had proved failures in France and were burdens on their relations. In the early years of the embassy many were sent out who gave endless trouble and embarrassment to Washington and Congress. Out of the whole horde, only about three--Lafayette, Steuben, and De Kalb--were ever anything more than a nuisance. But, to avoid giving offence to the French people, Franklin was often obliged to give these applicants some sort of letter of recommendation, and he drew up a form which he sometimes used in extreme cases:

"The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give
him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him,
not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you
it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person
brings another equally unknown, to recommend him; and sometimes
they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer
you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is
certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be. I recommend
him, however, to those civilities, which every stranger, of whom
one knows no harm, has a right to; and I request you will do him
all the good offices, and show him all the favor, that, on
further acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the
honor to be, &c."

The old man's sense of humor carried him through many a difficulty; and it is hardly necessary to say that the management of all this multifarious business, the exercise of such large authority and discretion, and the weight of such responsibility required a nervous force, patience, tact, knowledge of men and affairs, mental equipoise, broad, cool judgment, and strength of character which comparatively few men in America possessed. Indeed, it is difficult to name another who could have filled the position. John Adams could not have done it. He would have lost his temper and blazed out at some point, or have committed some huge indiscretion that would have wrecked everything. That Lee, Izard, or even Deane could have held the post would be ridiculous to suppose.

Adams appeared again in Paris in the beginning of the year 1780, having been sent by Congress to await England's expected willingness to treat for peace. He was authorized to receive overtures for a general peace, and also, if possible, to negotiate a special commercial treaty with England. He had nothing to do but wait, and was in no way connected with our embassy in France. But being presented at court and asked by Vergennes to furnish information, he must needs try to make an impression. He assailed Vergennes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, with numerous reasons why he should at once disclose to the court at London his readiness to make a commercial treaty. He argued about the question of the Continental currency and how it should be redeemed. He urged the sending of a large naval force to the United States; and when told that the force had already been sent without solicitation, he attempted to prove in the most tactless and injudicious manner that it was not without solicitation, but, on the contrary, the king had been repeatedly asked for it, and had yielded at last to importunity.

This conduct was so offensive to Vergennes that he complained of it to Franklin, who was obliged to rebuke Adams; and Congress, when the matter came before it, administered another rebuke. Adams never forgave Franklin for this, and afterwards publicly declared that Franklin and Vergennes had conspired to destroy his influence and ruin him. At the time, however, he had the good sense to take his rebuff in silence, and went off grumbling to Holland to see if something could not be done to render the United States less dependent on France.

Adams represented a large party, composed principally of New-Englanders, who did not like the alliance with France and were opposed to Franklin's policy of extreme conciliation and friendliness with the French court. It was as one of this party that Adams had attempted to give Vergennes a lesson and show him that America was not a suppliant and a pauper. Like the rest of his party, he harbored the bitter thought that France intended to lord it over the United States, send a general over there who would control all the military operations, get all the glory, and give the French ever after a preponderating influence. He thought America had been too free in expressions of gratitude to France, that a little more stoutness, a greater air of independence and boldness in our demands, would procure sufficient assistance and at the same time save us from the calamity of passing into the hands of a tyrant who would be worse than Great Britain had been.

His attempt at stoutness, however, was at once checked by Vergennes, who refused to answer any more of his letters; and there is no doubt that if Adams's plan had been adopted by the United States government, our alliance with France would have been jeopardized. It is not pleasant to think that without the aid of France the Revolution would have failed and we would have again been brought under subjection to England; but it is unquestionably true, and as Washington had no hesitation in frankly admitting it, we need have none.

At the time of Adams's attempted interference with Franklin's policy our fortunes were at a very low ebb. The resources of the country were exhausted and the army could no longer be maintained on them. The soldiers were starving and naked, and the generals could not show themselves without being assailed with piteous demands for food and clothes. France had much to gain by assisting us against England, and she never pretended that she had not; but in all the documents and correspondence that have been brought to light there is no evidence that she intended to take advantage of our situation or that her ministers had designs on our liberties. Indeed, when we read the whole story of her assistance, including the secret correspondence, it will be found almost unequalled for its worthiness of purpose and for the honorable means employed.

Franklin had spent several years at the court, knew everybody, and thoroughly understood the situation.

"The king, a young and virtuous prince, has, I am persuaded, a
pleasure in reflecting on the generous benevolence of the action
in assisting an oppressed people, and proposes it as a part of
the glory of his reign. I think it right to increase this
pleasure by our thankful acknowledgments, and that such an
expression of gratitude is not only our duty, but our interest.
A different conduct seems to me what is not only improper and
unbecoming, but what may be hurtful to us.... It is my intention
while I stay here to procure what advantages I can for our
country by endeavoring to please this court; and I wish I could
prevent anything being said by any of our countrymen here that
may have a contrary effect, and increase an opinion lately
showing itself in Paris, that we seek a difference, and with a
view of reconciling ourselves in England."

Please the court, as well as the whole French nation, he most certainly did. His communications with Vergennes, even when he was asking for money or some other valuable thing, were not only free from offence, but so adroit, so beautifully and happily expressed, that they charmed the exquisite taste of Frenchmen. There is not space in this volume to give expression to all that the people of the court thought of his way of managing the business intrusted to him by America, but one sentence from a letter of Vergennes to the French minister in America may be given:

"If you are questioned respecting our opinion of Dr. Franklin,
you may without hesitation say that we esteem him as much on
account of the patriotism as the wisdom of his conduct, and it
has been owing in a great part to this cause, and to the
confidence we put in the veracity of Dr. Franklin, that we have
determined to relieve the pecuniary embarrassments in which he
has been placed by Congress."

It is not likely that Gouverneur Morris, Jefferson, or any other American of that time possessed the qualifications necessary to give them such a hold on the French court as Franklin had. We were colonists, very British in our manners, of strong energy and intelligence, but quite crude in many things, and capable of appearing in a very ridiculous light in French society, which was in effect the society of Louis XIV., very exacting, and by no means so republican as it has since become.

As a matter of fact, the French disliked everybody we sent to them at that time except Franklin. Deane they tolerated, Izard they laughed at, Adams they snubbed, and Lee they despised as a stupid blunderer who knew no better than to abuse French manners in the presence of his servants, who spread the tale all over Paris. But dear, delightful, philosophic, shrewd, economical, naughty, flirtatious, and anecdote-telling Franklin seemed like one of themselves. He still remains the only American that the French have thoroughly known and liked. The more we read of him the more confidence we are inclined to place in the supposition that three or four centuries back he must have had a French ancestor who migrated to England, and some of whose characteristics were reproduced in his famous descendant. The little fables and allegories he wrote to please them read like translations from the most subtle literary men of France. Fancy any other American or Englishman writing to Madame Brillon the letter which was really a little essay afterwards known as the "Ephemera," and very popular in France.

"You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent
that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the
Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed
some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless
skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose
successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired
within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a
leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I
understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great
application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give
for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I
listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little
creatures; but as they, in their natural vivacity, spoke three
or four together, I could make but little of their conversation.
I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now
and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two
foreign musicians, one a _cousin_, the other a _moscheto_; in
which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of
the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a
month. Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise,
just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances
to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the
perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head
from them to an old grey-headed one, who was single on another
leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I
put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to
whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all
amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony."...

The letter is too long to quote entire; but some of the fine touches in the passage given should be observed. He refers to the little progress he had made in French, and he certainly spoke that language badly, although he read it with ease. He probably had a large vocabulary; but he trampled all over the grammar, as Adams tells us. He managed, however, by means of a little humor to make this defect endear him still more to the people. The musical dispute of the insects is a hit at a similar dispute among the Parisians over two musicians, Gluck and Picini. But what a depth of subtlety is shown in the suggestion which follows, that the French were under such a wise government and such a good king that they could afford to waste their time in disputing about trifles! No wonder that all the notable people and the rulers loved him.

This single delicately veiled point was alone almost sufficient to make his fortune in the peculiar society of that time. It was in such perfect taste, so French, such a rebuke to the fanatics who were laying the foundations of the Reign of Terror; and yet, at the same time, Franklin, as the apostle of liberty, was regarded by many of those fanatics as one of themselves. In this way he carried with him all France.

But suppose that John Adams had been given the opportunity to write such a letter to a French lady; what would he have done? The straightforward fellow would probably have thought it his religious, moral, and patriotic duty to tell her that the government she lived under was wasteful and extravagant, and was plotting to destroy the liberties of America.

Madame Brillon, for whom the "Ephemera" was written, was a charming woman and more domestic than French ladies are supposed to be. For her amusement were written some of Franklin's most famous essays,--"The Morals of Chess," "The Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout," "The Story of the Whistle," "The Handsome and Deformed Leg," and "The Petition of the Left Hand." In a letter telling how the "Ephemera" happened to be written he has described the intimacy he and his grandson enjoyed at her house:

"The person to whom it was addressed is Madame Brillon, a lady
of most respectable character and pleasing conversation;
mistress of an amiable family in this neighborhood, with which I
spend an evening twice every week. She has, among other elegant
accomplishments, that of an excellent musician; and with her
daughter who sings prettily, and some friends who play, she
kindly entertains me and my grandson with little concerts, a cup
of tea, and a game of chess. I call this _my Opera_, for I
rarely go to the Opera at Paris."

Madame Helvetius, a still more intimate friend, was a very different sort of woman. She was the widow of a literary man of some celebrity, and she and Franklin were always carrying on an absurd sort of flirtation. They hugged and kissed each other in public, and exchanged extravagant notes which were sometimes mock proposals of marriage, although some have supposed them to have been real ones. He wrote a sort of essay addressed to her, in which he imagines himself in the other world, where he meets her husband, and, after the exchange of many clever remarks with him about madame, he discovers that Helvetius is married to his own deceased wife, Mrs. Franklin, who declares herself rather better pleased with him than she had been with the Philadelphia printer.

"Indignant at this refusal of my Eurydice, I immediately
resolved to quit those ungrateful shades, and return to this
good world again, to behold the sun and you! Here I am: let us
_avenge ourselves_!"

Such sport over deceased wives and husbands would not be in good taste in America or England, but it was correct enough in France. One of his short notes to Madame Helvetius has also been preserved:

"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'."

Mrs. Adams has left a description of Madame Helvetius which admirers of Franklin have in vain attempted to explain away by saying that all French women were like her, and that she was, after all, a really noble person:

"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 lute-string, 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, 'Hélas! 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 hand 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 behavior, 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
lap-dog, 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 neighbor; but I have not yet visited her. Thus
you see, my dear, that manners differ exceedingly in different
countries. I hope, however, to find amongst the French ladies
manners more consistent with my ideas of decency, or I shall be
a mere recluse." (Letters of Mrs. John Adams, p. 252.)

It is not likely that Franklin had the respect for Madame Helvetius that he had for Madame Brillon. She was, strange to say, an illiterate woman, as one of her letters to him plainly shows. Some of his letters to her read as if he were purposely feeding her inordinate vanity. He tells her in one that her most striking quality is her artless simplicity; that statesmen, philosophers, and poets flock to her; that he and his friends find in her "sweet society that charming benevolence, that amiable attention to oblige, that disposition to please and to be pleased which we do not always find in the society of one another." She lived at Auteuil, and he and the Abbé Morellet and others called her "Our Lady of Auteuil." They boasted much of their love for her, and enjoyed many wonderful conversations on literature and philosophy, and much gayety at her house, which they called "The Academy."

After Franklin had returned to America the Abbé Morellet, who was an active and able man in his way, wrote him many amusing letters about their lady and her friends.

"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 drawerful 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.'"

One of the cleverest letters Franklin wrote while in France was addressed to an old English friend, Mrs. Thompson, who had called him a rebel. "You are too early, _hussy_" he says, "as well as too saucy, in calling me _rebel_; you should wait for the event, which will determine whether it is a _rebellion_ or only a _revolution_. Here the ladies are more civil; they call us _les insurgens_, a character that usually pleases them." He continues chaffing her, and describes himself as wearing his own hair in France, where every one else had on a great powdered wig. If they would only dismiss their _friseurs_ and give him half the money they pay to them, "I could then enlist these _friseurs_, who are at least one hundred thousand, and with the money I would maintain them, make a visit with them to England, and dress the heads of your ministers and privy councillors, which I conceive at present to be _un peu dérangées_. Adieu, madcap; and believe me ever, your affectionate friend and humble servant."

In the large house of M. de Chaumont, which he occupied, he, of course, had his electrical apparatus, and played doctor by giving electricity to paralytic people who were brought to him. On one occasion he made the wrong contact, and fell to the floor senseless. He had, also, a small printing-press with type made in the house by his own servants, and he used it to print the little essays with which he amused his friends.

His friendships in France seem to have been mostly among elderly people. There are only a few traces of his fondness for young girls, and we find none of those pleasant intimacies such as he enjoyed with Miss Ray, Miss Stevenson, or the daughters of the Bishop of St. Asaph. Unmarried women in France were too much restricted to be capable of such friendships even with an elderly man. But among his papers in the collection of the American Philosophical Society there is a letter written by some French girl who evidently had taken a fancy to him and playfully insisted on calling herself his daughter.

"MY DEAR FATHER AMÉRICAIN

"god Bess liberty! I drunk with all my heart to the republick of
the united provinces. I am prepared to my departure if you will
and if it possible. give me I pray you leave to go. I shall be
happy of to live under the laws of venerable good man richard.
adieu my dear father I am with the most respect and tenderness

"Your humble Servant
"and your daughter
"J. B. J. CONWAY.

"Auxerre 22 M. 1778."

Besides the dining abroad, which, he tells us, occurred six days out of seven, he gave a dinner at home every Sunday for any Americans that were in Paris; "and I then," he says, "have my grandson Ben, with some other American children from the school."

New-Englanders had very economical ideas in those days, and when it was learned that Franklin entertained handsomely in Paris there was a great fuss over it in the Connecticut newspapers.

The _fête-champêtre_ that was given to him by the Countess d'Houdetot must have been a ridiculous and even nauseous dose of adulation to swallow; but he no doubt went through it all without a smile, and it serves to show the extraordinary position that he occupied. He was more famous in France than Voltaire or any Frenchman.

A formal account of the _fête_ was prepared by direction of the countess, and copies circulated in Paris. The victim of it is described as "the venerable sage" who, "with his gray hairs flowing down upon his shoulders, his staff in his hand, the spectacles of wisdom on his nose, was the perfect picture of true philosophy and virtue;" and this sentence is as complete a summary as could be made of what Franklin was to the French people.

As soon as he arrived the countess addressed him in verse:

"Soul of the heroes and the wise,
Oh, Liberty! first gift of the gods.
Alas! at too great a distance do we offer our vows.
As lovers we offer homage
To the mortal who has made citizens happy."

The company walked through the gardens and then sat down to the banquet. At the first glass of wine they rose and sang,--

"Of Benjamin let us celebrate the glory;
Let us sing the good he has done to mortals.
In America he will have altars;
And in Sanoy let us drink to his glory."

At the second glass the countess sang a similar refrain, at the third glass the viscount sang, and so on for seven glasses, each verse more extraordinary than the others. Virtue herself had assumed the form of Benjamin; he was greater than William Tell; Philadelphia must be such a delightful place; the French would gladly dwell there, although there was neither ball nor play. But Sanoy was Philadelphia as long as dear Benjamin remained there. He was led to the garden to plant a tree, with more singing about the lightning that he had drawn from the sky, and the lightning, of course, would never strike that tree. Finally he was allowed to depart with another song of adulation addressed to him after he was seated in the carriage.

Now that more than a hundred years have passed it is gratifying to our national pride to reflect that a man who was so thoroughly American in his origin and education should have been worshipped in this way by an alien race as no other man, certainly no other American, was ever worshipped by foreigners. But the enjoyment of this stupendous reputation, overshadowing and dwarfing the Adamses, Jays, and all other public men who went to Europe, was marred by some unpleasant consequences. Jealousies were aroused not only among individuals, but to a certain extent among all the American people. It was too much. He had ceased to be one of them. It was rumored that he would never return to America, but would resign and settle down among those strangers who treated him as though he were a god.

It was also inevitable that a worse suspicion should arise. He was too subservient, it was said, to France. He yielded everything to her. He was turning her from an ally into a ruler. He could no longer see her designs; or, if he saw them, he approved of them. This suspicion gained such force that it was the controlling principle with Adams and Jay when they went to Paris to arrange the treaty of peace with England after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in October, 1781. We have seen instances in our own time of our ministers to Great Britain becoming very unpopular at home because they were liked in England, and in Franklin's case this feeling was vastly greater than anything we have known in recent years, because his popularity in France was prodigious, and he avowedly acted upon the principle that it was best to be complaisant to the French court.

During the winter which followed the surrender of Lord Cornwallis overtures of peace were made by England to Franklin, as representing America, and to Vergennes, as representing France, and they became more earnest in March after the Tory ministry, which had been conducting the war, was driven from power. In April the negotiations with Franklin were well under way, and he continued to conduct them until June, when he was taken sick and incapacitated for three months. After his recovery he took only a minor part in the proceedings, for Jay and Adams had meanwhile arrived.

Congress had appointed Adams, Jay, Franklin, Jefferson, and Laurens commissioners to arrange the treaty, and made Adams head of the commission. When the negotiations began, however, Franklin was the only commissioner at Paris, and necessarily took charge of all the business. Just before he was taken sick Jay arrived, and he and Jay conducted affairs until Adams joined them at the end of October. Laurens, who had been a prisoner in England, did not reach Paris until just before the preliminary treaty was signed, and Jefferson, being detained in America, took no part in the proceedings.

While Franklin was carrying on the negotiations alone, he insisted on most of the terms which were afterwards agreed upon: first of all, independence, and, in addition to that, the right to fish on the Newfoundland Banks and a settlement of boundaries; but he added a point not afterwards pressed by the others,--namely, that Canada should be ceded to the United States. In exchange for Canada he was prepared to allow some compensation to the Tories for their loss of property during the war. Adams and Jay, on taking up the negotiations, dropped Canada entirely and insisted stoutly to the end that there should be no compensation whatever to the Tories.

Franklin's admirers have always contended that it would have been better if Jay and Adams had kept away altogether, for in that case Franklin would have secured all that they got for us and Canada besides. This, however, is mere supposition, one of those vague ideas of what might have been without any proof to support it. Franklin pressed the cession of Canada, it is true; but there is no evidence that it would have been granted. At that time the people of the United States appear not to have wanted the land of snow, and ever since then the general opinion has been that we have enough to manage already, and are better off without a country vexed with serious political controversies with its French population and the Roman Catholic school question.

On the whole, it would not have been well for Franklin to have continued to conduct the negotiations alone. The situation was difficult, and the united efforts and varied ability of at least three commissioners were required. Neither Franklin nor Jay knew much about the fisheries question, and they might have been forced to yield on this point. But Adams, from his long experience in conducting litigation for the Massachusetts fishing interests, was better prepared on this subject than any other American, and it was generally believed by the public men of that time that the important rights we secured on the Newfoundland Banks were due almost entirely to his skill. He was also more familiar with the boundary question between Maine and New Brunswick, and had brought with him documents from Massachusetts which were invaluable.

While Jay and Franklin were acting together before the arrival of Adams, a serious question arose about the commission of Oswald, the British negotiator who had come over to Paris. He was empowered to treat with the "Colonies or Plantations," and nowhere in the document was the term United States of America used. Jay refused to treat with a man who held such a commission. Franklin and Vergennes vainly urged that it was a mere form, and that Great Britain had already in several ways acknowledged the independence of the United States. Oswald showed an article of his instructions which authorized him to grant complete independence to the thirteen colonies, and he offered to write a letter declaring that he treated with them as an independent power; but Jay was inflexible, and in this he seems to have been right.

Franklin made a great mistake in not agreeing with him, for in the suspicious state of people's minds at that time his conduct in this respect was taken as proof positive of his subserviency to the French court. Jay suspected that Vergennes advised accepting Oswald's commission so as to prevent a clear admission of independence, and thus keep the United States embroiled with England as long as possible. In order to support his opposition to Jay, Franklin was obliged to talk about his confidence in the French court, its past generosity and friendliness, and also to call attention to the instruction of Congress that the commissioners should do nothing without the knowledge of the French government, and in all final decisions be guided by that government's advice.

This instruction had been passed by Congress after much debate and hesitation, and was finally carried, it is said, through the influence of the French minister. Its adoption was a mistake; without it the commissioners would probably of their own accord have sought the advice of Vergennes; but a positive order to do so put them in an undignified and humiliating position. Franklin had been so long intimate with Vergennes and was so accustomed to consulting him that the instruction was superfluous as to him. His reputation was so great in France and his tact so perfect that he was in no danger of feeling overshadowed or subdued by such consultations; but Jay and Adams so thoroughly detested the instruction that they had made up their minds to disregard it altogether.

"Would you break your instruction?" said Franklin.

"Yes," said Jay, "as I break this pipe," and he threw the pieces into the fire.

Jay's firmness compelled Oswald to obtain a new commission in the proper form, and while he deserves credit for this and also for his principle, "We must be honest and grateful to our allies, but think for ourselves," he seems in the light of later evidence to have been mistaken in his deep mistrust of the French court. His opinions have been briefly stated by Adams:

"Mr. Jay likes Frenchmen as little as Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard did.
He says they are not a moral people; they know not what it is;
he don't like any Frenchman; the Marquis de Lafayette is clever,
but he is a Frenchman. Our allies don't play fair, he told me;
they were endeavoring to deprive us of the fishery, the western
lands, and the navigation of the Mississippi; they would even
bargain with the English to deprive us of them; they want to
play the western lands, Mississippi, and whole Gulf of Mexico
into the hands of Spain." (Adams's Works, vol. iii. p. 303.)

Jay had had a very bitter experience in Spain, where the cold haughtiness and chicanery of the court had made him feel that he was among enemies. The instructions sent to him by Congress had been intercepted, and instead of receiving them as secret orders from his government, they had been handed to him by the Spanish prime-minister after that official had read them. He was accordingly prepared to think that the French government was no better.

In a certain sense there were grounds for his suspicion of France. She was interested in the fisheries on the Banks of Newfoundland, and would naturally like to have a share in them. It was also obviously her policy to prevent the United States and England from becoming too friendly and from making too firm a peace, for fear that they might unite at some future time against her. If she could get them to make a sort of half peace with a number of subjects left unsettled, about which there would be difficulties for many years, it would be a great advantage to her.

Spain wanted to secure the control of the Gulf of Mexico, the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi, and the possession of the lands west of that river, and France, as her ally, might be expected to assist her to obtain these concessions. Arguments and suggestions favoring all these projects were unquestionably used by Frenchmen at that time, and no doubt Vergennes and other public men often had them in mind. It was their duty at least to consider them. But there is no evidence that they actively promoted these schemes or acted in any other than an honorable manner towards us.

As a matter of fact, our commercial relations with England were left unsettled. England claimed, among other things, the right to search our ships, and there was great discontent over this for a long time, amply sufficient to keep us from friendship with England until the question was finally settled by the war of 1812. Adams seems to imply that he could have settled this and other difficulties in 1780 by the commercial treaty which he was empowered to make with England, and that Vergennes, in advising him not to communicate with England, had intended to keep England and the United States embroiled. Possibly that may have been Vergennes's intention. But as it was afterwards found impossible to adjust these commercial difficulties until the war of 1812, and as Adams himself did not attempt it, though he might have done so in spite of Vergennes's advice, and as they were finally settled only by a war, it is not probable that Adams could have adjusted them in the easy, offhand way he imagines. In any event, it was not worth while for the sake of these future contingencies to offend Vergennes and jeopardize our alliance and the loans of money we were obtaining from France.

Franklin's policy of making absolutely sure of the friendship and assistance of France seems to have been the sound one, and with his wonderful accomplishments and adaptability he could be friendly and agreeable without sacrificing anything. But Adams went at everything with a club, and could understand no other method.

I cannot find that Franklin was at any time willing to sacrifice the fisheries, or the Mississippi River or the western lands. In fact, he was more firm on the question of the Mississippi than Congress. In its extremity, Congress finally instructed Jay to yield the navigation of the Mississippi if he could get assistance from Spain in no other way; and the Spanish premier, having intercepted this instruction and read it, had poor Jay at his mercy. But Franklin was very strenuous on this point, and wrote to Jay,--

"Poor as we are, yet, as I know we shall be rich, I would rather
agree with them to buy at a great price the whole of their right
on the Mississippi, than sell a drop of its waters. A neighbor
might as well ask me to sell my street door."

Jay grew more and more suspicious of France, and Adams reports him as saying, "Every day produces some fresh proof and example of their vile schemes." One of the British negotiators obtained for him a letter which Marbois, the secretary of the French legation in America, had written home, urging Vergennes not to support the commissioners in their claim to the right of fishing on the Newfoundland Banks. This he considered absolute proof; but the examination which has since been made of all the confidential correspondence of that period does not show that Marbois's suggestion was ever acted upon. Individuals doubtless cherished purposes of their own, but the French government in all its actions seems to have fully justified Franklin's confidence in it. Jefferson, who afterwards went to France, declared that there was no proof whatever of Franklin's subserviency.

When Adams arrived he was delighted to find himself in full accord with Jay. He had been in Holland, where he had succeeded in negotiating a loan and a commercial treaty, and consequently felt that he was somewhat of a success as a diplomatist, and need not any longer be so much overawed by Franklin. He relates in his diary how the French courtiers heaped compliments on him. "Sir," they would say, "you have been the Washington of the negotiation." To which he would answer in his best French, "Sir, you have given me the grandest honor and a compliment the most sublime." They would reply, "Ah, sir, in truth you have well deserved it." And he concludes by saying, "A few of these compliments would kill Franklin, if they should come to his ears."

He uses strong language about the "base system" pursued by Franklin, and talks in a lofty way of the impossibility of a man becoming distinguished as a diplomatist who allows his passion for women to get the better of him. He and Jay conducted the rest of the negotiations and completed the treaty, Franklin merely assisting; and Adams gloried in breaking the instruction of Congress to take the advice of France. He was still smarting under the rebuke administered for his interference and for the offence he gave Vergennes a year or two before, and after declaring that Congress in this rebuke had prostituted its own honor as well as his, he breaks forth on the subject of the instruction to take the advice of France:

"Congress surrendered their own sovereignty into the hands of a
French minister. Blush! blush! ye guilty records! blush and
perish! It is glory to have broken such infamous orders.
Infamous, I say, for so they will be to all posterity. How can
such a stain be washed out? Can we cast a veil over it and
forget it?" (Adams's Works, vol. iii. p. 359.)

Franklin finally agreed that they should go on with the negotiations and make the treaty without consulting the French government. Vergennes was offended, but Franklin managed to smooth the matter over and pacify him. Congress censured the commissioners for violating the instruction, and they all made the best excuses they could. Franklin's was a very clever one.

"We did what appeared to all of us best at the time, and if we
have done wrong, the Congress will do right, after hearing us,
to censure us. Their nomination of five persons to the service
seems to mark, that they had some dependence on our joint
judgment, since one alone could have made a treaty by direction
of the French ministry as well as twenty."

It is probable that Franklin agreed to ignore the instruction, and assented to all the other acts of the commissioners, because he thought it best to have harmony. Such an opportunity for a terrible quarrel could not have been resisted by some men, for Adams bluntly told him that he disapproved of all his previous conduct in the matter of the treaty. As Adams was the head of the commission, it would seem that Franklin, finding himself outvoted, took the proper course of not blocking a momentous negotiation by his personal feelings or opinions, so long as substantial results were being secured. In this respect he did exactly the reverse of what Adams had prophesied. In the beginning of the negotiations Adams entered in his diary, "Franklin's cunning will be to divide us; to this end he will provoke, he will insinuate, he will intrigue, he will manoeuvre." Instead of that he encouraged their union.

Adams's writings are full of extraordinary suspicions of this sort which turned out to be totally unfounded; but so fond was he of them that, after having been obliged to confess that Franklin had acted in entire harmony with the commissioners, and after all had ended well and Franklin had obtained another loan of six millions from Vergennes, he cannot resist saying, "I suspect, however, and have reason, but will say nothing." Those familiar with him know that this means that he had no reason or evidence whatever, but was simply determined to gratify his peculiar passion.

Franklin wrote a long letter to Congress about the treaty, and after saying that he entirely discredited the suspicions of the treachery of the French court, he squares accounts with Adams:

"I ought not, however, to conceal from you, that one of my
colleagues is of a very different opinion from me in these
matters. He thinks the French minister one of the greatest
enemies of our country, that he would have straitened our
boundaries, to prevent the growth of our people; contracted our
fishery, to obstruct the increase of our seamen; and retained
the royalists among us, to keep us divided; that he privately
opposes all our negotiations with foreign courts, and afforded
us, during the war, the assistance we received, only to keep it
alive, that we might be so much the more weakened by it; that to
think of gratitude to France is the greatest of follies, and
that to be influenced by it would ruin us. He makes no secret of
his having these opinions, expresses them publicly, sometimes in
presence of the English ministers, and speaks of hundreds of
instances which he could produce in proof of them. None,
however, have yet appeared to me, unless the conversations and
letter above-mentioned are reckoned such.

"If I were not convinced of the real inability of this court to
furnish the further supplies we asked, I should suspect these
discourses of a person in his station might have influenced the
refusal; but I think they have gone no further than to occasion
a suspicion, that we have a considerable party of Antigallicians
in America, who are not Tories, and consequently to produce some
doubts of the continuance of our friendship. As such doubts may
hereafter have a bad effect, I think we cannot take too much
care to remove them; and it is therefore I write this, to put
you on your guard, (believing it my duty, though I know that I
hazard by it a mortal enmity), and to caution you respecting the
insinuations of this gentleman against this court, and the
instances he supposes of their ill will to us, which I take to
be as imaginary as I know his fancies to be, that Count de
Vergennes and myself are continually plotting against him, and
employing the news-writers of Europe to depreciate his
character, &c. But as Shakespeare says, 'Trifles light as air,'
&c. I am persuaded, however, that he means well for his country,
is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in
some things, absolutely out of his senses."

Adams never forgave this slap, and he and his descendants have kept up the "mortal enmity" which Franklin knew he was hazarding.

Before he left France Franklin took part in making a treaty with Prussia, and secured the insertion of an article which embodied his favorite idea that in case of war there should be no privateering, the merchant vessels of either party should pass unmolested, and unarmed farmers, fishermen, and artisans should remain undisturbed in their employments. But as a war usually breaks all treaties between the contending nations, this one might have been difficult to enforce.

At last, in July, 1785, came the end of his long and delightful residence in a country which he seems to have loved as much as if it had been his own. No American, and certainly no Englishman, has ever spoken so well of the French. He never could forget, he said, the nine years' happiness that he had 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."

The king gave him his picture set in two circles of four hundred and eight diamonds,[28] and furnished the litter, swung between two mules, to carry him to the coast. If the king himself had been in the litter he could not have received more attention and worship from noblemen, ecclesiastics, governors, soldiers, and important public bodies on the journey to the sea. It was a triumphal march for the American philosopher, now so old and so afflicted with the gout and the stone that he could barely endure the easy motion of the royal mules.

His two grandsons accompanied him. De Chaumont and his daughter insisted on going as far as Nanterre, and his old friend Le Veillard went with him all the way to England. He kept a diary of the journey, full of most interesting details of the people who met him on the road, how the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld sent messengers to stop him and order him with mock violence to spend the night at his castle. It is merely the jotting down of odd sentences in a diary, but the magic of Franklin's genius has given to the smallest incidents an immortal fascination.

He would have liked to spend some time in England among his old friends, but the war feeling was still too violent. He, however, crossed to England and stayed four days at Southampton waiting for Captain Truxton's ship, which was to call for him. English friends flocked down to see him and to give him little mementos, and the British government gave orders that his baggage should not be examined. The Bishop of St. Asaph, who lived near by, hastened to Southampton with his wife and one of his daughters and spent several days in saying farewell. On the evening of the last day they accompanied him on board the ship, dined there, and intended to stay all night; but, to save him the pain of parting, they went ashore after he had gone to bed. "When I waked in the morning," he says, "found the company gone and the ship under sail."

The bishop's daughter, Catherine, wrote him one of her charming letters which, as it relates to him, is as immortal as any of his own writings. Every day at dinner, she tells him, they drank to his prosperous voyage. She is troubled because she forgot to give him a pin-cushion. He seemed to have everything else he needed, and that might have been useful. "We are forever talking of our good friend; something is perpetually occurring to remind us of the time spent with you." They had besought him to finish during the voyage his Autobiography, which had been begun at their house. "We never walk in the garden without seeing _Dr. Franklin's room_, and thinking of the work that was begun in it."

FOOTNOTES:

[28] By his will Franklin left this picture to his daughter, Sarah Bache, and it is still in the possession of her descendants. He requested her not to use the outer circle of diamonds as ornaments and introduce the useless fashion of wearing jewels in America, but he implied that she could sell them. She sold them, and with the proceeds she and her husband made the tour of Europe. The inner circle he directed should be preserved with the picture, but they were removed.