Heureux larcin
De l’habile Benjamin.
“L’Américain indompté
Recouvre sa liberté;
Autre exploit de notre sage,
Est mis à fin
Par Louis et Benjamin.”
These verses are characteristic of that intimate circle. L’habile Benjamin!
Nothing with regard to Franklin is more curious than the Memoirs of the long-lived Abbé,[285] including especially the humorous engraving illustrating the benevolence of Nature in the construction of the elbow, from a design by the lightning-and-sceptre-seizer. In some copies this engraving is wanting. Franklin is represented as fond especially of Scottish airs and chansons à boire, which he accompanied sometimes on the harmonica, “an instrument, as is known, of his invention.” The scandalous whispers with regard to him, strangely adopted by a German traveller in our country,[286] had no better authority, probably, than these hilarities and the well-known “infatuation” of the court ladies. But the good Abbé, who saw him so freely with the friends he loved, dwells on his exquisite social qualities, his perfect good-nature, his simplicity of manners, his uprightness of soul, which made itself felt in the smallest things, his extreme tolerance, and, above all, his sweet serenity, changing easily into gayety; and he describes the great void made in that circle when he left for America.