In the early part of March, Mr. Short being still on his travels, and vexatious questions having arisen in connection with the Dutch loans, Mr. Jefferson determined to intrust their settlement to Calvert, and, accordingly, the young man set out for Amsterdam with scarce a day’s notice of his journey.  His embassy concerned the refusal of our bankers in Amsterdam (into whose hands Congress had placed all monies) to pay bills for the redemption of our captives, and the medals which Mr. Jefferson had contracted should be struck off for the foreign officers who had engaged in the revolution.  This refusal placed the American Minister in a most embarrassing position.  To his demands the Holland bankers replied that Congress had appropriated the money in their charge solely to the payment of the interest on the Dutch loan through the year 1790.  As a failure to pay the interest on the loan would have been fatal to the credit and standing of the infant republic in the eyes of Europe, it was evident to Mr. Jefferson that a new loan would have to be set going to defray the new debts.  This delicate and difficult project (for our credit was none of the best and the old loan had not all been taken up) he intrusted to Calvert, and so quickly and satisfactorily did the young man execute his commission that he was back again in Paris by the end of the month with reports highly gratifying to the American Minister.

“You have a better head for finances than even Mr. Hamilton, whose opinions are so much quoted in Congress,” says Mr. Jefferson, with a smile.  “I think no one could have conducted these affairs to a better issue.  It has always been my opinion that your peculiar talents lay in the direction of finances, and now I am persuaded of it.”

So delighted was Mr. Jefferson with Calvert’s performance that he recounted the successful embassy to Mr. Morris, whose good opinion of Calvert was greatly increased, and, having always had a liking for the young man, he took occasion to see more than ever of him.  He insisted on Calvert’s accompanying him frequently into the great world of Paris where he himself was so welcome, and where, indeed, the young man’s presence was also demanded on all sides—­even by royalty itself in the person of Madame la Duchesse d’Orleans, whose acquaintance Mr. Morris had made in the apartments of Madame de Chastellux in the Palais Royal.  Although accustomed to the company of the highest nobility, Mr. Morris was somewhat uncertain whether he would get along well with royalty, and would not have pursued the acquaintance begun by chance in Madame de Chastellux’s salon had not the Duchess expressed her pleasure in his society in most unequivocal terms.  Satiated with flattery, bored by the narrow circle in which she was forced to move, profoundly humiliated by the neglect and viciousness of her husband, she was charmed by the wit, independence, and true courtesy of the brilliant American.  A daughter of the old Duc de Penthievre, the embodiment of everything good in the ancien regime, the Duchess of Orleans was, herself, a woman of rare good sense, beauty, and tact, all of which appealed strongly to Mr. Morris, so that the acquaintance begun so graciously on her part and so dubiously on his, soon ripened into real friendship.