Franklin responded for his fellow envoys. “Your Majesty may count on the gratitude of Congress and its faithful observance of the pledges it now takes.”
That evening Vergennes gave a great dinner in their honor at Versailles. Later they made a call on the royal family. The charming and beautiful Marie Antoinette, who was at her gambling table, insisted that Franklin stand by her, and talked to him in between making her bids at exceedingly high stakes. It was certainly the first time in history that the son of an American candlemaker kept company with a queen.
15
AMERICA’S FIRST AMBASSADOR
In the spring after the signing of the treaty with France, Silas Deane was recalled to America. John Adams was sent to take his place. Franklin invited him and his wife Abigail to stay with him at Passy, and arranged for their ten-year-old son John Quincy to go to school with Benjamin Bache.
The comfortable life at Passy made Puritan-minded Adams uncomfortable. Though Franklin’s taste in dress and food was exceedingly simple compared to the French aristocrats with whom he had to keep company, Adams found him extravagant. He felt it a waste of money that Arthur Lee should have separate quarters in Paris. At the same time he objected that no rent was paid at Passy and vainly tried to get Chaumont to accept payment.
He could not help himself. Basically it was simply impossible for him to approve of someone like Benjamin Franklin: “He loves his ease, hates to offend, and seldom gives any opinion till obliged to do it.... Although he has as determined a soul as any man, yet it is his constant policy never to say yes or no decidedly but when he cannot avoid it.”
John Adams was a man who always said yes or no decidedly, never having, like Franklin, learned from Socrates that if you wish to convince people, making them think for themselves is more effective than bludgeoning them.
But as he was essentially honest, Adams did not deny that Franklin was beloved by the French as he would never be: “His name was familiar to government and people,” he wrote later, “to king, courtiers, nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman or footman, a lady’s chambermaid or a scullion in a kitchen who was not familiar with it and who did not consider him a friend to human kind.... When they spoke of him they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age....”
In one of the many elaborate ceremonies organized in Franklin’s honor, a crown of laurel was placed on his white hair by the most beautiful of three hundred women admirers. At another, a walking stick with a gold head wrought in the form of a cap of liberty was presented to him. A poem, composed for the occasion, was read.
The wood of the cane, it said, had been seized on the plains of Marathon by the Goddess of Liberty before she abandoned Greece. It had been transported to Switzerland, where the valiant mountaineers fought against invading Austrians. More recently it had been seen at Trenton, where Washington defeated the British. By possession of this symbol of victory, Benjamin Franklin was assured of a place in the “Temple of Memory.”