Europe and the American Revolution 187
its representative at Versailles, for Franklin was the only American whose name
was known in Europe at the beginning of the American Revolution. He was, how-
ever, very well known, and favorably known, for his electrical and other scientific
experiments and for his defense of the colonies in England at the time of the
Stamp Act. He had been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since
- As one who, in a famous epigram, had wrested the lightning from heaven
and the scepter from tyrants, he was the perfect embodiment of what philosophes
meant by a philosopher; self- taught, but profoundly schooled in the laws of nature;
a patriot who had given years to the public service; the author, it was believed, of
the constitution of Pennsylvania (he had in fact presided at the Pennsylvania con-
vention); gallant with the ladies, yet above the foolishness of an artificial society; a
plain man, the sage of Philadelphia, with an aura of Quakerism about him, who
mixed with a natural equality in all social circles, and preserved his dignity, and his
simple costume, when presented at Versailles to the King of France.
Franklin slipped into Paris in the last days of 1776, the unavowed agent of un-
recognized revolutionaries. He left it in 1785, after nine years of adulation. A gen-
eration of Frenchmen that had worn handkerchiefs in honor of John Wilkes out-
did itself to welcome Franklin, not only with handkerchiefs but with prints and
engravings or anything else that might display his features: medallions and snuff-
boxes, hats and canes, clocks, chinaware, watches and rings. Poetic tributes came
not only from poets but from ladies and statesmen; it was Turgot who coined the
line Eripuit caelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis, and the fashionable Countess
d’Houde tot, in an elaborate garden party in his honor, saluted him as Legislateur
d ’un monde, et bienfaiteur de deux. At the salon of Mme. Helvetius he met Turgot,
Condorcet, Volney, and Cabanis. At the Lodge of the Nine Sisters he met Voltaire,
and also Brissot and Dr. Guillotin. At the Academy of Sciences, he mixed with
French scientists, and was appointed to a committee, along with Lavoisier, to in-
vestigate the claims of Mesmerism. He was elected to learned societies in Lyons,
Orleans, Madrid, Turin, Padua, and Rotterdam. His embrace with Voltaire at the
Academy of Sciences in 1778 was the high point in all this extraordinary furor.
Coming a few weeks after the signing of the Franco- American treaty, and a few
months before the death of the octogenarian Voltaire, it was taken to symbolize
the union of two worlds, the enlightenment of the Old joining with the liberation
of the New.
Franklin in all this uproar not only performed his mission by negotiating the
treaty, but publicized the United States in every way possible. He exploited his
own personality, or rather the preconceptions of it that he found in France, with
the serene effectiveness of a man free from personal vanity. He wrote articles for
the Affaires de l ’Angleterre et de l ’Amér ique. He saw to the translation of his Poor
Richard and other writings. He put atrocity stories about the British and Indians
into the press, and wrote a hoax on the Sale of the Hessians. He arranged with the
Duke de La Rochefoucauld- Liancourt to have the American constitutions trans-
lated into French, and he instigated Mirabeau to write against the Order of the
Cincinnati, of which more will shortly be said. He wrote letters of introduction for
Frenchmen going to America, and he obtained the election of several to the
American Philosophical Society. He listened politely to the numerous well-