s appealed to the imagination of these
people,' he said, 'I am the only man who has used thunderbolts for his
playthings. Then, too, I am speaking for a new world to an old one.
Just at present I am the voice of Human Liberty. I represent the
hunger of the spirit of man. It is very strong here. You have not
traveled so far in France without seeing thousands of beggars. They
are everywhere. But you do not know that when a child comes in a poor
family, the father and mother go to prison _pour mois de nourrice_. It
is a pity that the poor can not keep their children at home. This old
kingdom is a muttering Vesuvius, growing hotter, year by year, with
discontent. You will presently hear its voices.'"

[Illustration: Ben Franklin]

There was a dinner that evening at Franklin's house, at which the
Marquis de Mirabeau, M. Turgot, the Madame de Brillon, the Abbe Raynal
and the Compte and Comptesse d' Haudetot, Colonel Irons and three other
American gentlemen were present. The Madame de Brillon was first to
arrive. She entered with a careless, jaunty air and ran to meet
Franklin and caught his hand and gave him a double kiss on each cheek
and one on his forehead and called him "papa."

"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