Frenchmen; and it was only the low esteem in which he was held that
prevented his singular behavior from doing irreparable injury to the
colonial cause. The English newspapers tauntingly ridiculed his
insignificance and incapacity; de Vergennes could not endure him, and
scarcely treated him with civility. But his intense egotism prevented
him from gathering wisdom from such harsh instruction, which only added
gall to his native bitterness. He wreaked his revenge upon his
colleagues, and towards Franklin he cherished an envious hatred which
developed into a monomania. Perhaps Franklin was correct in charitably
saying that at times he was "insane." He began by asserting that
Franklin was old, idle, and useless, fit only to be shelved in some
respectable sinecure mission; but he rapidly advanced from such moderate
condemnation until he charged Franklin with being a party to the
abstraction of his dispatches from a sealed parcel, which was rifled in
some unexplained way on its passage home;[61] and finally he even
reached the extremity of alleging financial dishonesty in the public
business, and insinuated an opinion that the doctor's great rascality
indicated an intention never again to revisit his native land. In all
this malevolence he found an earnest colleague in the hot-blooded Izard,
whose charges against Franklin were unmeasured. "His abilities," wrote
this angry gentleman, "are great and his reputation high. Removed as he
is at so considerable a distance from the observation of his
constituents, if he is not guided by principles of virtue and honor,
those abilities and that reputation may produce the most mischievous
effects. In my conscience I declare to you that I believe him under no
such restraint, and God knows that I speak the real, unprejudiced
sentiments of my heart." Such fulminations, reaching the States out of
what was then for them the obscurity of Europe, greatly perplexed the
members of Congress; for they had very insufficient means for
determining the value of the testimony given by these absent witnesses.

[Note 61: Parton's _Franklin_, ii. 354.]

It would serve no useful purpose to devote valuable space to narrating
at length all the slander and malice of these restless men, all the
correspondence, the quarrels, the explanations, and general trouble to
which they gave rise. But the reader must exercise his imagination
liberally in fancying these things, in order to appreciate to what
incessant a