before we start Doctor Franklin
will have to promise not to fire his cannons at us.'

"I showed the letter to Franklin and he laughed and said:

"'They will be treated tenderly. The Commodore will convoy them across
the channel. I shall assure Hartley of that in a letter which will go
forward today.'

"Anxious days are upon us. Our money in America has become almost
worthless and we are in extreme need of funds to pay and equip the
army. We are daily expecting a loan from the King of three million
livres. But Vergennes has made it clear to us that the government of
France is itself in rather desperate straits. The loan has been
approved, but the treasury is waiting upon certain taxes not yet
collected. The moment the money is available the Prime Minister will
inform us of the fact.

"On a fine autumn day we drove with the Prince of Conde in his great
coach, ornamented with costly paintings, to spend a day at his country
seat in Chantilly. The palace was surrounded by an artificial canal;
the gardens beautified with ponds and streams and islands and cascades
and grottos and labyrinths, the latter adorned with graceful
sculptures. His stables were lined with polished woods; their windows
covered with soft silk curtains. Of such a refinement of luxury I had
never dreamed. Having seen at least a thousand beggars on the way, I
was saddened by these rich, lavish details of a prince's
self-indulgence.

"On the wish of our host, Franklin had taken with him a part of his
electrical apparatus, with which he amused a large company of the
friends of the great _Seigneur_ in his palace grounds. Spirits were
fired by a spark sent from one pond to another with no conductor but
the water of a stream. The fowls for dinner were slain by electrical
shocks and cooked over a fire kindled by a current from an electrical
bottle. At the table the success of America was toasted in electrified
bumpers with an accompaniment of guns fired by an electrical battery.

"A poet had written a _Chanson a Boire_ to Franklin, which was read and
merrily applauded at the dinner--one stanza of which ran as follows:

"'Tout, en fondant un empire,
Vous le voyez boire et rire
Le verre en main
Chantons notre Benjamin.'

"To illustrate the honest candor with which often he speaks, even in
the presence of Frenchmen who are near the throne, I quote a few words
from his brief address to the Prince and his friends;

"'A good pa