Not even the wealthiest and most powerful ruler could guard his dominions against such an air raid. The terrible threat would mean an end to warfare. So Franklin reasoned, happily unable to peer into the future.
Following the Treaty of Paris, Congress had retained his services as ambassador to France for two years longer. He served unofficially as United States ambassador for all of Europe, and new honors rained down on him. He was elected a member of Madrid’s Royal Academy of History, of Manchester’s Literary and Philosophical Society, of the Academies of Sciences and Arts in the French towns of Orléans and Lyons. Through Admiral Lord Richard Howe, a staunch friend still, the British Admiralty sent him Captain Cook’s Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, a tribute to his instructions to American cruisers to refrain from interfering with the explorer and his crew.
His real and solid pleasures came not from such tokens of recognition but from the circle of good friends he had acquired in his years at Passy. He was on good terms with the parish priest, the village tradesmen, and all the children of the town. The Chaumont family, on whose estate he lived, were deeply devoted to him, including the young daughter Sophie whom he called “my little wife.”
He established strong bonds of friendship with his neighbor, the lovely and talented young Madame Brillon, wife of an elderly treasury official. For several years he called on her nearly every Wednesday and Saturday, to play chess or to idle on her terrace in the sun. Sometimes he played for her on his armonica.
Once he spent a summer day with Madame Brillon and some other companions on Moulin-Joli, an island on the Seine. Over the river hovered a swarm of tiny May flies, known as ephemera since their life span is but a few hours. As a souvenir of this holiday, he wrote the “Ephemera,” one of his most charming fables, a delicate satire about the trivia which make up the thoughts and actions of many human souls during their own comparatively brief period on earth.
“Papa,” Madame Brillon called Franklin. After she and her husband left Passy, she sent him a plaintive note. “How am I going to spend the Wednesdays and Saturdays?” Might they perhaps be united in paradise? “We shall live on roast apples only; the music will be made up of Scottish airs ... everyone will speak the same language; the English will be neither unjust nor wicked ... ambition, envy, pretensions, jealousy, prejudices, all these will vanish at the sound of the trumpet.”
Young and old, French women lavished attention on the American philosopher. In return, he gave them affection both fatherly and gallant, told them amusing stories, and showed that combination of respect for their mental capacities and appreciation of their womanly charms which had won over Catherine Ray Greene so many years before.
Among his many close women friends the most celebrated was the elderly Madame Helvétius, widow of a wealthy landowner and philosopher, who lived with her two daughters at Auteuil, a village next to Passy, in the midst of a little park planted with hortensias and rhododendron, and over-run with cats, dogs, chickens, canaries, pigeons, and wild birds. “Our Lady of Auteuil,” Franklin called her, while her daughters were “les étoiles,” the stars.
Her salon was frequented by philosophers, statesmen, poets, scientists, and mathematicians. Franklin first met her through the French minister Turgot. When she knew him better she told him she wished she had welcomed him as she had Voltaire, whom she had greeted at her gate like a king.
One of the many scholars Franklin met at her salon was a talented young doctor named Philippe Pinel. Franklin advised him to come to America where doctors were badly needed. Pinel was tempted but refused—and became famous for his courage and wisdom in removing chains from the insane at the Paris hospitals of Bicêtre and Saltpêtrière.