were divided into two Houses
instead of seven. Keeping the good model of your neighboring country
before your eyes, you may get on, step by step, towards a good
constitution. Though that model is not perfect, yet, as it would unite
more suffrages than any new one which could be proposed, it is better to
make that the object. If every advance is to be purchased by filling the
royal coffers with gold, it will be gold well employed. The King, who
means so well, should be encouraged to repeat these Assemblies. You see
how we republicans are apt to preach, when we get on politics. Adieu, my
dear friend.

Yours affectionately,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER LIII.--TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE, March 20, 1787

TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE.

Nismes, March 20, 1787.

Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the _Maison Quarree_, like a
lover at his mistress. The stocking-weavers and silk-spinners around it,
consider me as a hypochondriac Englishman, about to write with a pistol
the last chapter of his history. This is the second time I have been in
love since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de
Lay-Epinaye in Beaujolois, a delicious morsel of sculpture, by M. A.
Slodtz. This, you will say, was in rule, to fall in love with a female
beauty: but with a house! It is out of all precedent. No, Madam, it
is not without a precedent, in my own history. While in Paris, I
was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm, and used to go to the
Tuileries almost daily to look at it. The _loueuse des chaises_,
inattentive to my passion, never had the complaisance to place a chair
there, so that, sitting on the parapet, and twisting my neck round to
see the object of my admiration, I generally left it with a torticollis.

From Lyons to Nismes I have been nourished with the remains of Roman
grandeur. They have always brought you to my mind, because I know your
affection for whatever is Roman and noble. At Vienne I thought of you.
But I am glad you were not there; for you would have seen me more
angry than I hope you will ever see me. The Praetorian palace, as it is
called, comparable, for its fine proportions, to the _Maison Quarree_,
defaced by the barbarians who have converted it to its present purpose,
its beautiful fluted Corinthian columns cut out in part to make space
for Gothic windows, and hewed down in the residue to the plane of
the building, was enough, you must admit, to disturb my composure. At
Orang