"However, here is how I have attempted to translate this verse for the portrait of Franklin:—
'Tu vois le sage courageux
Dont l'heureux et mâle génie
Arracha le tonnerre aux dieux
Et le sceptre à la tyrannie.'
If you find these verses sufficiently supportable, so that people will not laugh at me, you can put them into the Paris paper, even with my name. I shall honor myself in rendering this homage to Franklin, but on condition that you find the verses printable. As I make no pretension on account of them, I shall be perfectly content, if you reject them as bad.
"The third verse can be put,—A ravi le tonnerre aux cieux, or aux dieux."
From this letter it appears that the critical judgment of La Harpe, confirmed by D'Alembert, sided for sceptrumque as better than mox sceptra.
But the verse of Turgot was not alone in its testimony. There was an incident precisely contemporaneous, which shows how completely France had fallen under the fascination of the American cause. Voltaire, the acknowledged chief of French literature in the brilliant eighteenth century, after many years of busy exile at Ferney, in the neighborhood of Geneva, where he had wielded his far-reaching sceptre, was induced, in his old age, to visit Paris once again before he died. He left his Swiss retreat on the sixth of February, 1778, the very day on which Franklin signed the Alliance with France, and after a journey which resembled the progress of a sovereign, he reached Paris on the twelfth of February. He was at once surrounded by the homage of all that was most illustrious in literature and science, while the theatre, grateful for his contributions to the drama, vied with the Academy. But there were two characters on whom the patriarch, as he was fondly called, lavished a homage of his own. He had already addressed to Turgot a most remarkable epistle in verse, the mood of which may be seen in its title, "Épitre à un Homme"; but on seeing the discarded statesman, who had been so true to benevolent ideas, he came forward to meet him, saying, with his whole soul, "Let me kiss the hand which signed the salvation of the people." The scene with Franklin was more touching still. Voltaire began in English, which he had spoken early in life, but, having lost the habit, he soon charted to French, saying that he "could not resist the desire of speaking for one moment the language of Franklin." The latter had brought with him his grandson, for whom he asked a benediction. "God and Liberty," said Voltaire, putting his hands upon the head of the child; "this is the only benediction proper for the grandson of Franklin." A few days afterward, at a public session of the Academy, they were placed side by side, when, amidst the applause of the enlightened company, the two old men rose and embraced. The political triumphs of Franklin and the dramatic triumphs of Voltaire caused the exclamation, that "Solon embraced Sophocles." But it was more than this. It was France embracing America, beneath the benediction of "God and Liberty." Only a few days later, Voltaire died. But the alliance with France had received a new assurance, and the cause of American Independence an unalterable impulse.
Turgot did not live to enjoy the final triumph of the cause to which he had given such remarkable expression. He died March 30th, 1781, several months before that "crowning mercy," the capture of Cornwallis, and nearly two years before the Provisional Articles of Peace, by which the Colonies were recognized as free and independent States. But his attachment to Franklin was one of the enjoyments of his latter years.[33] Besides the verse to which so much reference has been made, there is an interesting incident which attests the communion of ideas between them, if not the direct influence of Turgot. Captain Cook, the eminent navigator, who "steered Britain's oak into a world unknown," was in distant seas on a voyage of discovery. Such an enterprise naturally interested Franklin, and, in the spirit of a refined humanity, he sought to save it from the chances of war. Accordingly, he issued a passport, addressed "To all captains and commanders of armed ships, acting by commission from the Congress of the United States of America, now in war with Great Britain," where, after setting forth the nature of the voyage of the English navigator, he proceeded to say,—"This is most earnestly to recommend to every one of you, that, in case the said ship, which is now expected to be soon in the European seas on her return, should happen to fall into your hands, you would not consider her as an enemy, nor suffer any plunder to be made of the effects contained in her, nor obstruct her immediate return to England; but that you would treat the said Captain Cook and his people with all civility and kindness, affording them, as common friends to mankind, all the assistance in your power which they may happen to stand in need of."[34] This document bears date March 10th, 1779. But Turgot had anticipated Franklin. At the first outbreak of the war, he had submitted a memoir to the French Government, on which it was ordered that Captain Cook should not be treated as an enemy, but as a benefactor of all European nations.[35] Here was a triumph of civilization, by which we have all been gainers; for such an example is immortal in its influence.
There is yet another circumstance which should be mentioned, in order to exhibit the identity of sympathies in these two eminent persons. Each sought to marry Madame Helvétius: Turgot early in life, while she was still Mademoiselle Ligniville, belonging to a family of twenty-one children, from a chateau in Lorraine, and the niece of Madame de Graffigny, the author of the "Peruvian Letters"; Franklin in his old age, while a welcome guest in the intellectual circle which this widowed lady continued to gather about her. Throughout his stay in France he was in unbroken relations with this circle, dining with it very often, and adding much to its gayety, while Madame Helvétius, with her friends, dined with him once a week. It was with tears in his eyes that he parted from her, whom he never expected to see again in this life; and on reaching his American home, he addressed her in words of touching tenderness:—"I stretch out my arms towards you, notwithstanding the immensity of the seas which separate us, while I wait the heavenly kiss which I firmly trust one day to give you."[36]
But the story of the verse is not yet finished. And here it mingles with the history of Franklin in Paris, constituting in itself an episode of the American Revolution. The verse was written for a portrait. And now that the ice was broken, the portrait of Franklin was to be seen everywhere,—in painting, in sculpture, and in engraving. I have counted, in the superb collection of the Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris, nearly a hundred engraved heads of him. At the royal exposition of pictures the republican portrait found a place, and the name of Franklin was printed at length in the catalogue,—a circumstance which did not pass unobserved at the time; for the "Espion Anglais," in recording it, treats it as "announcing that he began to come out from his obscurity."[37] The same curious authority, describing a festival at Marseilles, says, under date of March 20th, 1779,—"I was struck, on entering the hall, to observe a crowd of portraits representing the insurgents; but that of M. Franklin especially drew my attention, on account of the device, 'Eripuit cœlo,' etc. This was inscribed recently, and every one admired the sublime truth."[38] Thus completely was France, not merely in its social centre, where fashion gives the law, but in its distant borders, pledged to the cause of which Franklin was the representative.
As in the halls of science and in popular resorts, so was our Plenipotentiary even in the palace of princes. The biographer of the Prince de Condé dwells with admiration upon the illustrious character who, during the great debate and the negotiations which ensued, had fixed the regards of Paris, of Versailles, of the whole kingdom indeed,—although in his simple and farmer-like exterior so unlike those gilded plenipotentiaries to whom France was accustomed,—and he recounts, most sympathetically, that the Prince, after an interview of two hours, declared that "Franklin appeared to him above even his reputation."[39] And here again we encounter the unwilling testimony of Capefigue, who says that he was followed everywhere, taking possession of "hearts and minds," and that "his image, under the simple garb of a Quaker, was to be found at the hearth of the poor and in the boudoir of the beautiful";[40]—all of which is in harmony with the more sympathetic record of Lacretelle, who says that "portraits of Franklin were everywhere, with this inscription, Eripuit cœlo, etc., which the Court itself found just and sublime."[41]