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By Root 1151 0

company of the famous author. He was fighting the rising tide of sleep, the chair beneath him more comfortable with each tiring moment. He fumbled for his watch, but his tired eyes would not see the details, and the effort to retrieve his spectacles was simply too much work. He found himself thinking of Madame Brillon’s anger, relieved that it had not been directed at him. She is most charming, he thought, a thoroughly delightful companion. His eyes were closed now, and he was breathing in the scent of her perfume, was suddenly jarred awake by a burst of sound. He pulled himself upright in the chair, could see her marching toward him from the long hall, a flurry of motion, and she was there now, the clerk following her, nervous, a paper in his hand.

“Really! I am offended, Doctor! How dare anyone suggest . . . oh, the arrogance!”

Franklin took the note from the clerk, read aloud, “It is with regret that though I hold much admiration and respect for the good doctor, I cannot place myself in conversation with a man so identified with the rebel cause. Though I would enjoy such a meeting, I must maintain the strictest loyalty to my king. Edward Gibbon.”

Madame Brillon made an angry sound, said, “To think that I made this journey just to pay my respects to such a man! How utterly rude!”

Franklin stared at the paper, said, “My dear, I am a subscriber to the rhetorical skill that is best described as the last word. Young man, allow me a moment, then I would ask you to return to the reception, and convey my response.” He wrote,

Mr. Gibbon. I have read your note with understanding. As much as I admire your previous work involving the fall of Rome, I should like to offer, that when you take up your pen to write the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, I shall gladly furnish you with the ample materials in my possession. Benjamin Franklin

HE TOOK TEMPLE WITH HIM TO THE MEETING WITH VERGENNES, HAD already made good use of his grandson as his personal secretary. He knew that Arthur Lee suspected every servant, every employee around any of them as being a spy, while Deane seemed to ignore completely the same threat. Franklin found himself somewhat in the middle, but a secretary was a position too important to be filled carelessly. Temple had solved his dilemma. What the boy lacked in worldliness, he compensated for in loyalty and an inexhaustible desire to please.

Over the past few months, the meetings with the French court had produced little in the way of progress, and certainly nothing that should be kept from the ears of anyone’s secretary. It was a growing frustration for Franklin, as it had been for the other commissioners as well. Lee’s mission to Spain had been a complete failure, the Spanish king refusing even to meet with an American representative, even more hesitant than the French about provoking the anger of King George III. Lee had resumed his mission in another direction, traveling on to Berlin. He went at the invitation of the Prussian King Frederick, who had a legendary hatred for the English monarch. But Lee’s efforts were futile there as well, Frederick reluctant to widen a war that so many in Europe believed was simply an English problem.

Franklin had done his best to hide his despair over the news from America. The defeat of Washington’s army at Brandywine had erased any of the momentum from the victories in New Jersey. Franklin knew that around the French court, the friends of America were becoming more uncomfortable that their support for this rebellion might have unfortunate political consequences if their king suddenly turned his back on the whole affair.

They were to meet in the office of Conrad Alexandre Gerard, a subordinate of Vergennes, and one of the few French officials Franklin could speak to with complete frankness. Gerard did not share the stiff formality so common in the French court, seemed immune to the fear that his words might cause his king some indigestion. Despite Franklin’s deepening relationship with Vergennes, even in friendship, Vergennes seemed to couch his conversations