ound the bed. Mr. Jefferson
sat by her, and she gave him directions about a good many things that she
wanted done. When she came to the children, she wept, and could not speak
for some time. Finally she held up her hand, and, spreading out her four
fingers, she told him she could not die happy if she thought her four
children were ever to have a stepmother brought in over them. Holding her
other hand in his, Mr. Jefferson promised her solemnly that he would never
marry again;" and the promise was kept.

After his wife's death Jefferson sank into what he afterward described as
"a stupor of mind;" and even before that he had been, for the first and
last time in his life, in a somewhat morbid mental condition. He was an
excessively sensitive man, and reflections upon his conduct as governor,
during the raids into Virginia by Arnold and Cornwallis, coming at a time
when he was overwrought, rankled in his mind. He refused to serve again as
governor, and desiring to defend his course when in that office, became a
member of the House of Burgesses in 1781, in order that he might answer
his critics there; but not a voice was raised against him. In 1782, he was
again elected to the House, but he did not attend; and both Madison and
Monroe endeavored in vain to draw him from his seclusion. To Monroe he
replied: "Before I ventured to declare to my countrymen my determination
to retire from public employment, I examined well my heart to know whether
it were thoroughly cured of every principle of political ambition, whether
no lurking particle remained which might leave me uneasy, when reduced
within the limits of mere private life. I became satisfied that every
fibre of that passion was thoroughly eradicated."

Jefferson was an impulsive man,--in some respects a creature of the moment;
certainly often, in his own case, mistaking, as a permanent feeling, what
was really a transitory impression. His language to Monroe must,
therefore, be taken as the sincere deliverance of a man who, at that time,
had not the remotest expectation of receiving, or the least ambition to
attain, the highest offices in the gift of the American people.

VII

ENVOY AT PARIS

Two years after his wife's death, namely, in 1784, Jefferson was chosen by
Congress to serve as envoy at Paris, with John Adams and Benjamin
Franklin. The appointment came at an opportune moment, when his mi