“At table she sat between me and Doctor Franklin,” Jack writes.  “She frequently locked her hand in the Doctor’s and smiled sweetly as she looked into his eyes.  I wonder what the poor, simple, hard-working Deborah Franklin would have thought of these familiarities.  Yet here, I am told, no one thinks ill of that kind of thing.  The best women of France seem to treat their favorites with like tokens of regard.  Now and then she spread her arms across the backs of our chairs, as if she would have us feel that her affection was wide enough for both.

“She assured me that all the women of France were in love with le grand savant.

“Franklin, hearing the compliment, remarked:  ’It is because they pity my age and infirmities.  First we pity, then embrace, as the great Mr. Pope has written.’

“’We think it a compliment that the greatest intellect in the world is willing to allow itself to be, in a way, captured by the charms of women,’ Madame Brillon declared.

“‘My beautiful friend!  You are too generous,’ the Doctor continued with a laugh.  ’If the greatest man were really to come to Paris and lose his heart, I should know where to find it.’

“The Doctor speaks an imperfect and rather broken French, but these people seem to find it all the more interesting on that account.  Probably to them it is like the English which we have heard in America from the lips of certain Frenchmen.  How fortunate it is that I learned to speak the language of France in my boyhood!

“From the silver-tongued Mirabeau I got further knowledge of Franklin, with which I, his friend and fellow countryman, should have been acquainted, save that the sacrifices of the patriot are as common as mother’s milk and cause little comment among us.  The great orator was expected to display his talents, if there were any excuse for it, wherever he might be, so the ladies set up a demand for a toast.  He spoke of Franklin, ‘The Thrifty Prodigal,’ saying;

“’He saves only to give.  There never was such a squanderer of his own immeasurable riches.  For his great inventions and discoveries he has never received a penny.  Twice he has put his personal fortune at the disposal of his country.  Once when he paid the farmers for their horses and wagons to transport supplies for the army of Braddock, and again when he offered to pay for the tea which was thrown into Boston Harbor.’

“The great man turned to me and added: 

“’I have learned of these things, not from him, but from others who know the truth, and we love him in France because we are aware that he is working for Human Liberty and not for himself or for any greedy despot in the ‘west.’

“It is all so true, yet in America nothing has been said of this.

“As the dinner proceeded the Abbe Raynal asked the Doctor if it was true that there were signs of degeneracy in the average male American.