The national flags were finally delivered to the French
sailors, who "swore to defend till death these tokens of liberty, and of
American and French fraternity."

To the superficial observer, the great mass of the people seemed carried
away with a monomaniac frenzy. Democratic societies were founded in
imitation of Jacobin clubs; everything that was respectable in society
was denounced as aristocratic; politeness was looked upon as a sort of
_lese republicanisme_; the common forms of expression in use by the
_sans culottes_ were adopted by their American disciples; the title
"citizen" became as common in Philadelphia as in Paris; and in the
newspapers it was the fashion to announce marriages as partnerships
between "Citizen" Brown, Smith, or Jones, and the "citess," who had been
wooed to such an association. Entering the house of the president,
Citizen Genet was astonished and indignant at perceiving in the
vestibule a bust of Louis XVI, whom his friends had beheaded, and he
complained of this "insult to France." At a dinner, at which Governor
Mifflin was present, a roasted pig received the name of the murdered
king, and the head, severed from the body, was carried round to each of
the guests, who, after placing the liberty cap on his own head,
pronounced the word "Tyrant!" and proceeded to mangle with his knife
that of the luckless creature doomed to be served for so unworthy a
company! One of the democratic taverns displayed as a sign a revolting
picture of the mutilated and bloody corpse of Marie Antoinette.[48]

Nor was this enthusiasm confined to Philadelphia. In his admirable
daguerreotype of old New York, the venerable Doctor Francis has given a
vivid picture, from memory, of the effect of Genet's arrival and sojourn
in the country. Speaking of the arrival of _L'Embuscade_, he says: "The
notoriety of the event and its consequences enables me to bring to
feeble recollection many of the scenes which transpired in this city at
that time: the popular excitement and bustle; the liberty cap; the
_entree_ of Citizen Genet; the red cockade; the song of the
_Carmagnole_, in which with childish ambition I united; the _rencontre_
with the _Boston_ frigate, and the commotion arising from Jay's treaty.
Though I can not speak earnestly from actual knowledge, we must all
concede that these were the times when political strife assumed a
formidable aspect--when the press most flagrantly outraged individual
rights and domestic p