etary or a clerk, nor even any proper appointment of, or salary for,
his grandson. He seldom got an expression of thanks or approbation for
anything that he did, though he did many things wholly outside of his
regular functions and involving great personal risk and responsibility.
Yet when he really wanted to resign he was not allowed to do so; and
thus at last he was left to learn by inference that he had given
satisfaction.[74]

[Note 73: Franklin's _Works_, vii. 207; the letter is unfortunately
too long to quote. See also his letter to Lafayette, _Ibid._ 237.]

[Note 74: See letter to Carmichael, _Works_, vii. 285.]

***

No sooner had Adams got comfortably settled at home than he was obliged
to return again to Europe. Franklin, Jay, Laurens, Jefferson, and he
were appointed by Congress commissioners to treat for peace, whenever
the fitting time should come; and so in February, 1780, he was back in
Paris. But peace was still far away in the future, and Adams, meanwhile,
finding the intolerable incumbrance of leisure upon his hands,
exorcised the demon by writing long letters to de Vergennes upon sundry
matters of interest in American affairs. It was an unfortunate scheme.
If Nature had maliciously sought to create a man for the express purpose
of aggravating de Vergennes, she could not have made one better adapted
for that service than was Adams. Very soon there was a terrible
explosion, and Franklin, invoked by both parties, had to hasten to the
rescue, to his own serious injury.

On May 31, 1780, in a letter to the president of Congress, Franklin
said: "A great clamor has lately been made by some merchants, who say
they have large sums on their hands of paper money in America, and that
they are ruined by some resolution of Congress, which reduces its value
to one part in forty. As I have had no letter explaining this matter I
have only been able to say that it is probably misunderstood, and that I
am confident the Congress have not done, nor will do, anything unjust
towards strangers who have given us credit." Soon afterward Adams got
private information of the passage of an act for the redemption of the
paper money at the rate of forty dollars for one in silver. At once he
sent the news to de Vergennes. That statesman took fire at the tidings,
and promptly responded that foreigners ought to be indemnified for any
losses they might suffer, and that Americans alone should "support the
expense which is occasione