He was in Paris at the time of the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew, where, as he was a Huguenot, he would doubtless have perished but for the protection of the queen, who helped him to escape with his family.
Later, however, in the midst of the troubles and terrors of the time, he was thrown into the Bastille; and there he died, an old man of eighty years.
VI.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
"We call the Americans a nation of inventors," said Fergus. "How long has this been true?"
"That is a very curious question," said Uncle Fritz. "You remember we were talking of it before. When I go back to think of the hundred and fifty years before Bunker Hill, I think there must have been a great many inglorious Miltons hidden away in the New England towns. Really, the arts advanced very little between 1630 and 1775. Flint-locks had come in, instead of match-locks. But, actually, the men at Bunker Hill rested over the rail-fence old muskets which had been used in Queen Anne's time; and to this day a 'Queen's arm' is a provincial phrase, in New England, for one of these old weapons, not yet forgotten. That inability to improve its own condition comes to a people which lets another nation do its manufacturing for it. You see much the same thing in Turkey and French Canada. Just as soon as they were thrown on their own resources here, they began to invent."
"But," said Fergus, "there was certainly one great American inventor before that time."
"You mean Franklin,—the greatest American yet, I suppose, if you mean to measure greatness by intellectual power and intellectual achievement. Yes; Franklin's great discovery, and the inventions which followed on it, were made twenty-five years and more before Bunker Hill."
"What is the association between Franklin and Robinson Crusoe?" asked Alice. "I never read of one but I think of the other."