Of Europe he knew little, except what he had been able to absorb from books. It was a country of great artistic productivity, of enviable social life. Towards England he was not particularly attracted; towards France he felt much more favorably inclined. He had met many Frenchmen; some of them already had become his close friends, two particularly, the Chevalier de Chastellux and especially the youthful, impulsive, and charming Lafayette, who in a parting note had asked him to consider his house as his and to take the little motherless girl to Madame de Lafayette. He knew he would not be without friends, without society, that he would have an unique chance to meet the best minds of Europe. This practical American, so little given to the "joie de vivre" and without abandon, wanted primarily to increase his knowledge, to gather facts, to make comparisons. He had retained the taste for society, the good breeding, the polite manners, the artistic tendencies of the Virginian, but in him the American was already fully grown. He felt also that he had a certain mission and intended to fulfill it: it was to convey to the European statesmen whose wiles he distrusted the impression that the United States existed as a country, that they did not form a loose and temporary confederation of States, but a nation to be reckoned with and respected. His country was no longer his native Virginia alone: he was thinking nationally and not sectionally. For the French Jefferson was already a great American figure; he was going to embody the best there was in the newly constituted Union.