ion,
not so much at the French Court as at the court of French opinion, we
must go back a dozen years and see what that opinion had been since the
Peace of 1763.

The Treaty of Paris, like all treaties between equals founded upon the
temporary superiority of one over the other, had deeply wounded, not the
vanity only, but the pride of France. Humbled in the eyes of her rival,
humbled in the eyes of Europe, she was still more profoundly humbled in
her own eyes. It was a barbed and venomous arrow, haughtily left to
rankle in the wound. For highminded Frenchmen, it was henceforth the
wisdom as well as the duty of France to prepare the means and hasten the
hour of revenge. It was then that the eyes of French statesmen were
first opened to the true position of the American Colonies. It was then
that they first saw how much the prosperity of the parent state depended
upon the sure and constant flow of wealth and strength from this
exhaustless source. Then, too, they first, saw, these Colonies, in due
time, must grow into independence; and in this, independence, in this
severing of ties which they foresaw English pride would cling to long
after English avidity had stripped them of their natural strength, there
was the prospect of full and sweet revenge.

Scarce a twelvemonth had passed from the signing of the Treaty of
Paris, when the first French emissary, an officer of the French navy,
was already at his work in the Colonies. Passing to and fro, travelling
here and there, moving from place to place as any common traveller might
have done, his eyes and his ears were ever open, his note-book was ever
in his hand, and, without awakening the suspicions of England, the first
steps in a work to which the Duke of Choiseul looked forward as the
crowning glory of his administration were wisely and surely taken. They
were promptly followed up. The French Ambassador in England established
relations with Colonial agents in London which enabled him to follow the
progress of the growing discontent and anticipate the questions which
must soon be brought forward for decision. Franklin's examination before
the House of Commons became the text of an elaborate despatch,
harmonizing with the report of his secret agent, and opening a prospect
which even the weary eyes of Louis XV. could not look upon without some
return of the spirit that had won for his youth the long forfeited title
of the Well-Beloved. It was not the first time that the name