2].--We went together to the Spanish
Ambassador's, who received us with great civility and politeness. He
spoke with Mr. Jay on the subject of the treaty they were to make
together.... On our going out, he took pains himself to open the
folding-doors for us, which is a high compliment here, and told us he
would return our visit (_rendre son devoir_), and then fix a day with us
for dining with him."[81]

Adams, in his journal, describes a Sunday dinner at his house, then a
"new building in the finest situation of Paris,"[82] being a part of the
incomparable palace, with its columnar front, which is still admired as
it looks on the Place de la Concorde. Jay also describes a dinner with
the Count, who was "living in great splendor, with an assortment of
wines the finest in Europe," and was "the ablest Spaniard he had ever
known"; showing by his conversation "that his court is in earnest," and
appearing "frank and candid, as well as sagacious."[83] These
hospitalities have a peculiar interest, when it is known, as it now is,
that Count d'Aranda regarded the acknowledgment of our independence with
"grief and dread." But these sentiments were disguised from our
ministers.

After signing the Treaty of Paris, by which Spain acknowledged our
independence, D'Aranda addressed a memoir secretly to King Charles III.,
in which his opinions on this event are set forth. This prophetic
document slumbered for a long time in the confidential archives of the
Spanish crown. Coxe, in his "Memoirs of the House of Bourbon in Spain,"
which are founded on a rare collection of original documents, makes no
allusion to it. The memoir appears for the first time in a volume
published at Paris in 1837, and entitled _Gouvernement de Charles III.,
Roi d'Espagne, ou Instruction reservee a la Funte d'Etat par ce
Monarque. Publiee par D. Andre Muriel_. The editor had already
translated into French the Memoirs of Coxe, and was probably led by this
labor to make the supplementary collection. An abstract of the memoir of
D'Aranda appears in one of the historical dissertations of the Mexican
authority, Alaman, who said of it that it has "a just celebrity, because
results have made it pass for a prophecy."[84] I translate it now from
the French of Muriel.

"_Memoir communicated secretly to the King by his Excellency
the Count d'Aranda, on the Independence of the English
Colonies, after having signed the Treaty of Paris of 1783._

"The i