departed, Franklin asked the young man to sit down
for a talk by the fireside. The Doctor spoke of the women of France,
saying:

"'You will not understand them or me unless you remind yourself that we
are in Europe and that it is the eighteenth century. Here the clocks
are lagging. Time moves slowly. With the poor it stands still. They
know not the thing we call progress.'

"'Those who have money seem to be very busy having fun,' I said.

"'There is no morning to their day,' he went on. 'Their dawn is
noontime. Our kind of people have had longer days and have used them
wisely. So we have pushed on ahead of this European caravan. Our
fathers in New England made a great discovery.'

"'What was it?' I asked.

"'That righteousness was not a joke; that Christianity was not a solemn
plaything for one day in the week, but a real, practical, working
proposition for every day in the year; that the main support of the
structure is industry; that its most vital commandment is this, 'six
days shalt thou labor'; that no amount of wealth can excuse a man from
this duty. Every one worked. There was no idleness and therefore
little poverty. The days were all for labor and the nights for rest.
The wheels of progress were greased and moving.'

"'And our love of learning helped to push them along,' I suggested.

"'True. Our people have been mostly like you and me,' he went on. 'We
long for knowledge of the truth. We build schools and libraries and
colleges. We have pushed on out of the eighteenth century into a new
time. There you were born. Now you have stepped a hundred years
backward into Europe. You are astonished, and this brings me to my
point. Here I am with a great task on my hands. It is to enlist the
sympathy and help of France. I must take things, not as I could wish
them to be, but as I find them. At this court women are all powerful.
It has long been a maxim here that a diplomatist must stand well with
the ladies. Even though he is venerable, he must be gallant, and I do
not use the word in a shady sense. The ladies are not so bad as you
would think them. They are playthings. To them, life is not as we
know it, filled with realities. It is a beautiful drama of rich
costumes and painted scenes and ingenious words, all set in the
atmosphere of romance. The players only pretend to believe each other.
In the salon I am one of these players. I have to be.'

"'Mirabeau seemed to mean what he s