dame de
Luxembourg, a great lady of the time, and the Duke de Choiseul, late
Prime-Minister. This was on the thirty-first of December, 1776.[18] A
pretty good beginning. More than a year of effort and anxiety ensued,
brightened at last by the news that Burgoyne had surrendered at
Saratoga. On the sixth of February, 1778, the work of the American
Plenipotentiary was crowned by the signature of the two Treaties of
Alliance and Commerce by which France acknowledged our Independence and
pledged her belligerent support. On the fifteenth of March, one of these
treaties, with a diplomatic note announcing that the Colonies were free
and independent States, was communicated to the British Government, at
London, which was promptly encountered by a declaration of war from
Great Britain. On the twenty-second of March, Franklin was received by
the King at Versailles, and this remarkable scene is described by the
same feminine pen to which we are indebted for the early glimpse of him
on his arrival in Paris.[19] But throughout this intervening period he
had not lived unknown. Indeed, he had become at once a celebrity.
Lacretelle, the eminent French historian, says, "By the effect which
Franklin produced, he appears to have fulfilled his mission, not with a
court, but with a free people. His virtues and renown negotiated for
him."[20]

Condorcet, who was a part of that intellectual society which welcomed
the new Plenipotentiary, has left a record of his reception. "The
celebrity of Franklin in the sciences," he says, "gave him the
friendship of all who love or cultivate them, that is, of all who exert
a real and durable influence upon public opinion. At his arrival he
became an object of veneration to all enlightened men, and of curiosity
to others. He submitted to this curiosity with the natural facility of
his character, and with the conviction that in this way he served the
cause of his country. It was an honor to have seen him. People repeated
what they had heard him say. Every _fete_ which he consented to receive,
every house where he consented to go, spread in society new admirers,
_who became so many partisans of the American Revolution_.... Men whom
the works of philosophy had disposed secretly to the love of liberty
were impassioned for that of a strange people. A general cry was soon
raised in favor of the American War, and the friends of peace dared not
even complain that peace was sacrificed to the cause of liberty."[21]