r. Calvert attended him thither at his express wish, for he had the
young man's diplomatic education greatly at heart, and desired him to
profit by the debates in the Salle des Menus. In this way the young
gentleman found his days completely filled, while the evenings were
frequently as busily occupied in the preparation of letters for the
American packet, dictated by Mr. Jefferson and narrating the day's
events. Of things to be written there was no lack. Day after day,
through the hot months of May and June, events succeeded one another
rapidly. Tempestuous debates among the noblesse, the clergy, and the
tiers etat, upon the question of the verification of their powers,
separately and together, were followed by proposition and
counter-proposition, by commissions of conciliation which did not
conciliate, by royal letters commanding a fusion of the three orders, by
secessions from the nobility and clergy to the grimly determined and
united tiers, by courtly intrigues at Marly for the King's favor in
behalf of the nobles, by royal seances and ruses which, instead of
postponing, only hastened the evil hour, by the famous oath of the
Tennis Court, and by the triumph of the third estate. And in this
distracting clash of opposing political forces, amid this first crash
and downfall of the ancient order of things, there passed, almost
unnoticed, save by the weeping Queen and harassed King, who hung over
his pillow, the last sigh, the last childish words of the Dauphin. The
tired little royal head, which had been greeted eight years before with
such acclamations of enthusiastic delight, dropped wearily and all
unnoticed for the last time, happily ignorant of the martyr's crown it
had escaped. Calvert had the news from Madame de Montmorin when he went
to pay his respects to her on the evening of the 3d of June, and in
imagination he saw, over and over again, the lovely face of the Queen
distorted with unavailing grief.

All these public occurrences which filled the hurrying days were
reported in Mr. Jefferson's long letters to General Washington, to the
Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Jay, to Mr. Madison, Mr. Carmichael,
and other friends in America, whom he knew to be deeply interested in
the trend of French affairs. Indeed, he knew fully whereof he wrote,
for, although in that summer of '89 the position of the United States in
relation to Europe was anything but enviable, though we were deeply in
debt and our credit almost g