of a long and well spent life. His
personal fame aided him in a land where philosophers had become the
fashion of the day, and as the representative of a people struggling
for liberty he was peculiarly dear to the French, who were themselves
speculating on such matters and preparing for their own revolution. It
is of course easy to exaggerate the influence of sentiment in the case.
France was glad to encourage America because the loss of the colonies
would weaken the British Empire, and that was natural; but it is, I
think, a mistake not to acknowledge the generous sentiments of the
people and even of the grandees of the land. Voltaire and Rousseau had
not been preaching in vain; the American Declaration of Independence
was quite in the drift of French political ideas. But to awaken trust
in a people who dwelt in a far-off wilderness and who were commonly
esteemed little better than savages, the presence of such a man as
Franklin was of incalculable value.

After a brief interval M. de Chaumont, one of the wealthy Frenchmen of
the day, offered Franklin rooms at Passy in his Hotel de Valentinois,
and there our philosopher fixed his abode, living in some style, and
spending perhaps about thirteen thousand dollars a year. His popularity
was immediate and almost unexampled. The great people of
France--philosophers, statesmen, titled noblemen, and fine
ladies--thought it an honor to receive the famous American; and it is
said that so great was his fame among the common people that the
shopkeepers would run to their doors to see him pass down the street.
Innumerable pictures were drawn and medallions cut of his figure,
until, as he wrote, his countenance was made "as well known as that of
the moon, so that he durst not do anything that would oblige him to run
away, as his phiz would discover him wherever he should venture to show
it." Parton quotes this interesting account of the commissioners from
the Memoirs of Count Sigur: "Nothing could be more striking than ...
the almost rustic apparel, the plain but firm demeanor, the free and
direct language, of the envoys, whose antique simplicity of dress and
appearance seemed to have introduced within our walls, in the midst of
the effeminate and servile refinement of the eighteenth century, some
sages contemporary with Plato, or republicans of the age of Cato and of
Fabius. This unexpected apparition produced upon us a greater effect in
consequence of its novelty, and of its occur