to come and survey its beautiful verdure, to retire to its umbrage from the heats of the season.  I was through it to-day, as I am every day.  Every tree charged me with this invitation to you.  Passing by la Muette, it wished for you as a mistress.  You want a country-house.  This is for sale; and in the Bois de Boulogne, which I have always insisted to be most worthy of your preference.  Come then, and buy it.  If I had had confidence in your speedy return, I should have embarrassed you in earnest with my little daughter.  But an impatience to have her with me, after her separation from her friends, added to a respect for your ease, has induced me to send a servant for her.

I tell you no news, because you have correspondents infinitely more au fait of the details at Paris than I am.  And I offer you no services, because I hope you will come as soon as the letter could, which should command them.  Be assured, however, that nobody is more disposed to render them, nor entertains for you a more sincere and respectful attachment, than him, who, after charging you with his compliments to Monsieur de Corny, has the honor of offering you the homage of those sentiments of distinguished esteem and regard, with which he is, Dear Madam, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LXIII.—­TO JOHN ADAMS, July 1, 1787

TO JOHN ADAMS.

Paris, July 1, 1787.

Dear Sir,

I returned about three weeks ago from a very useless voyage; useless, I mean, as to the object which first suggested it, that of trying the effect of the mineral waters of Aix, in Provence, on my hand.  I tried these, because recommended among six or eight others as equally beneficial, and because they would place me at the beginning of a tour to the seaports of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, and L’Orient, which I had long meditated, in hopes that a knowledge of the places and persons concerned in our commerce, and the information to be got from them, might enable me sometimes to be useful.  I had expected to satisfy myself at Marseilles, of the causes of the difference of quality between the rice of Carolina, and that of Piedmont, which is brought in quantities to Marseilles.  Not being able to do it, I made an excursion of three weeks into the rice country beyond the Alps, going through it from Vercelli to Pavia, about sixty miles.  I found the difference to be, not in the management, as had been supposed both here and in Carolina, but in the species of rice; and I hope to enable them in Carolina, to begin the cultivation of the Piedmont rice, and carry it on, hand in hand, with their own, that they may supply both qualities which is absolutely necessary at this market.  I had before endeavored to lead the depot of rice from Cowes to Honfleur, and hope to get it received there on such terms, as may draw that branch of commerce from England to this