nnoyance Franklin was subjected at a time when the inevitable
anxieties and severe labors of his position were far beyond the strength
of a man of his years. He showed wonderful patience and dignity, and
though he sometimes let some asperity find expression in his replies, he
never let them degenerate into retorts. Moreover, he replied as little
as possible, for he truly said that he hated altercation; whereas Lee,
who reveled in it, took as an aggravation of all his other injuries that
his opponent was inclined to curtail the full luxury to be expected from
a quarrel. Franklin also magnanimously refrained from arraigning Lee and
Izard to Congress, either publicly or privately, a forbearance which
these chivalrous gentlemen did not emulate. The memorial[62] of Arthur
Lee, of May, 1779, addressed to Congress, contains criminations enough
to furnish forth many impeachments. But Franklin would not condescend to
allow his serenity to be disturbed by the news of these assaults. He
felt "very easy," he said, about these efforts to injure him, trusting
in the justice of the Congress to listen to no accusations without
giving him an opportunity to reply.[63] Yet his position was not so
absolutely secure and exalted but that he suffered some little injury at
home.

[Note 62: Franklin's _Works_, vi. 363.]

[Note 63: To Richard Bache, Franklin's _Works_, vi. 414.]

John Adams, going out to replace Silas Deane, crossed him on the
passage, arriving at Bordeaux on March 31, 1778. This ardent New
Englander, orderly, business-like, endowed with an insatiate industry,
plunged headlong into the midst of affairs. With that happy
self-confidence characteristic of our people, which leads every American
to believe that he can at once and without training do anything
whatsoever better than it can be done by any other living man no matter
how well trained, Adams began immediately to act and to criticise. In a
few hours he knew all about the discussions between the various envoys,
quasi envoys, and agents, who were squabbling with each other to the
scandal of Paris; in a few days he was ready to turn out Jonathan
Williams, unseen and unheard. He was shocked at the confusion in which
he saw all the papers of the embassy, and set vigorously about the task
of sorting, labeling, docketing, and tying up letters and accounts; it
was a task which Franklin unquestionably had neglected, and which
required to be done. He was appalled at the "prodigious