Know by it that we have in America a sentiment for France; and a sentiment, enduring among a people, is a great and substantial fact to be reckoned with.
We feel a little closer to you of France because of what you were to Franklin. Before the resplendence and charm of your country's history —when all the world does homage to your literature, your art, your exact science, your philosophic thought—we smile with pleasure, for we feel, if we do not say: "Yes, these are old friends of ours; they were very fond of our Ben Franklin and he of them."
Made more appreciative, perhaps, by what France did for us when this old philosopher came to you, a stranger, bearing the burdens of our early poverty and distress, we feel that the enormous value of France to civilization should lead every lover of mankind, in whatever land, earnestly to desire the peace, the prosperity, the permanence, and the unchecked development of your national life.
We, at least, can not feel otherwise; for what you were to Franklin we would be—we are—to you: always true and loyal friends.
The French Ambassador's Answer
On behalf of the French Republic, with feelings of gratitude, I receive the gift offered to my country, this masterful portrait of Franklin, which a law of Congress ordered to be made, and which is signed with the name, twice famous, of Saint-Gaudens.
Everything in such a present powerfully appeals to a French heart. It represents a man ever venerated and admired in my country—the scientist, the philosopher, the inventor, the leader of men, the one who gave to France her first notion of what true Americans really were. "When you were in France," Chastellux wrote to Franklin, "there was no need to praise the Americans. We had only to say: Look; here is their representative."
The gift is offered in this town of Philadelphia where there exists a hall the very name of which is dear to every American and every French heart—the Hall of Independence—and at a gathering of a society founded "for promoting useful knowledge," which has remained true to its principle, worthy of its founder, and which numbers many whose fame is equally great on both sides of the ocean.
I receive it at the hands of one of the best servants of the state which this country ever produced, no less admired at the head of her diplomacy now than he was lately at the head of her army, one of those rare men who prove the right man, whatever be the place. You have listened to his words, and you will agree with me when I say that I shall have two golden gifts to forward to my government: the medal and Secretary Root's speech.
The work of art offered by America to France will be sent to Paris to be harbored in that unique museum, her Museum of Medals, where her history is, so to say, written in gold and bronze, from the fifteenth century up to now, without any ruler, any great event, being omitted. Some of the American past is also written there—that period so glorious when French and American history were the same history, when first rose a nation that has never since ceased to rise.