ng it. Indeed, the labor put
upon our foreign representatives was wellnigh inconceivable, and could
those who cavilled at Dr. Franklin's lax business methods but have
imagined the tenth of what he had to attend to, they would have been
heartily ashamed of their complaints. Many of the enterprises which the
good Doctor had begun and left at loose ends, Mr. Jefferson found
himself obliged to go on with and finish as satisfactorily as was
possible. Besides which there were constant communications on an
infinity of subjects to be made to our representatives in London and in
Madrid and to our charges d'affaires at Brussels and The Hague; money
loans negotiated, bonds executed, important creditors at Paris appeased,
and numberless schemes for financial aid to be devised and floated. In
all of these affairs Mr. Calvert had his share, so that the young
gentleman had but small leisure for that social intercourse into which
Mr. Morris entered with such zest and perfect success.

Introduced by Mr. Jefferson and the letters he had brought with him, in
an incredibly short time Mr. Morris was known and admired in every salon
in Paris, and he stumped his way through them with that admirable savoir
faire and sturdy self-respect, dashed with a wholesome conceit, which
made him assure Calvert one day that he "had never felt embarrassment or
a sense of inferiority in any company in which he had ever found
himself." It was soon evident that of all the salons of Paris where he
was made welcome, the one most to his taste was that of the charming
Madame de Flahaut; but wherever he went in that aristocratic society
which claimed social preeminence over all others, this untitled
gentleman from a new, almost unknown, country, was easily and quickly
one of the most brilliant members. Utterly unawed by the splendid
company in which he found himself, he valued it at its true worth and
was keenly and amusingly observant of its pretensions, its shams, its
flippancy, its instability, its charm. Soon he had become as great a
favorite as Mr. Jefferson himself, though winning his enviable position
by qualities the very opposite of that gentleman's. Mr. Morris rivalled
the Parisians themselves in caustic wit, perfect manners, and the
thousand and one social graces of the time, while Mr. Jefferson
captivated all by his democratic manners and entire indifference to
social conventionality, much as the incomparable Dr. Franklin (whose
originality and address