CHAPTER XXV

MINISTER TO FRANCE

ON May 7, 1784, Congress resolved to send a third minister plenipotentiary to Europe to assist Benjamin Franklin and John Adams in negotiating commercial treaties. Mr. Jefferson received this appointment, and on the 11th May, 1784, he set out to join his colleagues, who were already in Europe. Going by way of Philadelphia to get his daughter Martha, he visited the New England States, to familiarize himself with those matters of commerce with which his duties would require him to deal. On July 5th he sailed from Boston, reached England after a voyage which was uneventful, and, crossing the Channel, arrived in Paris on the 6th of August.

There is no doubt that Mr. Jefferson found a great deal of enjoyment in his new office. It removed him from Monticello at a time when home had no charms. Old ties, and the dearest, had been broken; the wound was fresh, and amid those scenes it would be longest in healing.

In Paris there was everything to divert his

thoughts from the one subject which haunted him at Monticello. Besides, his environment was the most congenial he had ever known.

A scholar, he could mingle every hour of the day with savants; a freethinker, he could exchange ideas with those who dared to question all dogmas; a lover of art, music, and social entertainment, he could expand himself rapturously in the most elegant city in the world. No need now to go to church on Sundays just to soothe the conscience of pious neighbors. He could visit some Parisian Edmund Randolph, play chess all day on the Sabbath, and never have a strait-laced Madam Randolph rebuke his wickedness by refusing to appear.

In Virginia, it was necessary that he should be all things to all men-more particularly if they were Virginians. A boor could not be treated as a boor; he could not be frankly told that between himself and his host there was nothing in common, and that it would be pleasanter for both if the boor would jog along to the cross-roads tavern, where he would find a choice assortment of fellow boors.

Life in Paris was to a sensitive, cultured, somewhat dainty man like Jefferson what freedom would be to the caged bird. He reveled in his liberty. Never was he so much at ease, so much at home amid his surroundings.

He settled himself in handsome quarters, and began to spend his money on good living in a man

ner which threatened deficits, in spite of minute entries in account-books. Elegant furniture and appointments generally, a staff of servants, of course, equipages, of course, and epicurean winings and dinings. Flocking to him with joyful greetings came Lafayette and other Frenchmen who had known him in America. They introduced him at once into a social sphere which received him at his true worth. There was no period of probation, no anxious waiting for the verdict of the social petit jury, whose findings neither gods nor men can always with certainty predict.

When a member of the great Noailles family could vouch for him; when Dillon and Biron and D'Estaing and Rochambeau knew exactly what he was; when De Chastellux could tell of the Italian villa-home, which surpassed anything he had seen in America-the Monticello where he had enjoyed hospitality, admired the owner's pleasuregrounds, stood by when the master fed his deer in the park, and gazed appreciatingly over lawns, gardens, orchards, fields—it was a foregone conclusion that French aristocracy should welcome Jefferson as a peer.

"You replace Dr. Franklin, I believe," said the grandee, Vergennes, when the new minister was presented at the Foreign Office.

"I succeed him; no one could replace him." Now, above all things, a Frenchman loves a neat

turn of speech. The artist in words is to him as true to art as the chiseler of exquisite statues, and this repartee of Jefferson-innocent little thing!— not only tickled the ears of all Paris, but lives yet in all the biographies.

Immediately upon his arrival in Paris, Mr. Jefferson had gone to Passy and paid his respects to Dr. Franklin, who was then in very bad health. Between these two illustrious patriots there had always existed the most cordial relations, and these were never interrupted.

John Adams was summoned from Holland, and the three representatives of the infant republic proposed the form of a treaty of commerce which they proposed to offer to the nations. In spirit, this document was eminently just, humane, and liberal. The only monarch who would enter into these cordial relations with the infant republic was "old Frederick of Prussia."

It was in the spring of 1785 that Dr. Franklin returned home, and Congress made Mr. Jefferson minister to France.

Mr. Adams had been appointed to a similar position in England, and in March, 1786, Mr. Jefferson went over to London, at the request of Mr. Adams.

They hoped to be able to negotiate a commercial treaty with Great Britain. Their efforts were fruitless. The King turned his back upon them,

and the ministers would not even discuss the treaty. As long as he lived Mr. Jefferson remembered the studied indignities which were put upon him in England, and if any insult can be said to have ever rankled in his breast it was this.

Wounded, disgusted, indignant, he ceased to humiliate himself in the attempt to get the English minister interested in American commerce, and he set forth upon a tour of the historical scenes and show-placés."

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He and John Adams went together, and they seem to have enjoyed thoroughly this feature of their trip. Great palaces, magnificent parks, noted battle-fields, Westminster Abbey, Oxford, Woodstock, Shakespeare's cottage, they admired or reverenced as became appreciative strangers. On the battle-field of Worcester, where Cromwell had crowned his great career, Mr. Adams felt so much inspired by his feelings that he fired off an extemporaneous speech to some rustics who had come to stare at the tourists. Mr. Adams, who kept a diary, thought his little address made a happy impression on the minds of these natives. What the rustics actually did think of Adams and his speech can not now be known. Few rustics keep diaries.

As one would naturally suppose, the matchless gardens of our mother country fascinated Mr. Jefferson. He went into no raptures over historic spots which appeal to ardent imaginations, peo