After this time, Franklin did not keep such an open house as before, considerably to the relief of his gout. Previously, if we may believe John Adams, he had made a practice of inviting everybody to dine with him on Sunday at Passy. Sometimes, his company was made up exclusively, or all but exclusively, of Americans, and sometimes partly of Americans, and partly of French, and, now and then, there was an Englishman or so. Miss Adams mentions a "sumptuous dinner," at which the members of the Adams family, the Marquis de la Fayette and his wife, Lord Mount Morris, an Irish Volunteer, Dr. Jeffries, and Paul Jones were guests. Another dinner is mentioned by her at which all the guests were Americans, except M. Brillon, who had dropped in, he said, "à demander un diné à Père Franklin." A whimsical story is told by Jefferson of still another dinner at which one half of the guests were Americans and one half French.
Among the last [he says] was the Abbé (Raynal). During the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals, and even of men, in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor at length noticing the accidental stature and position of his guests, at table, "Come," says he, "M. L'Abbé, let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here one half Americans, and one half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table, and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature has degenerated." It happened that his American guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while those of the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbé himself, particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one.
Not the least interesting of the guests that Franklin drew around his table at Passy were lads, who had a claim upon his notice, either because they were the sons, or grandsons, of friends of his, or because they were friends of his grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. In a letter to Doctor Cooper, Franklin tells him that his grandson, Samuel Cooper Johonnot appeared a very promising lad, in whom he thought that the doctor would have much satisfaction, and was well on the preceding Sunday, when he had had the pleasure of his company to dinner with Mr. Adams' sons, and some other young Americans. There is still in existence a letter from John Quincy Adams, then a boy of eleven, to Franklin, which indicates that the latter had quite won his heart, though, do what he might, he could never win the heart of the elder Adams.
It was a brilliant society, to which Franklin was introduced, after the first reserve of the French Court, before its recognition of American independence, was laid aside. He had the magpie habit of hoarding every scrap of paper or cardboard, that bore the imprint of his existence, and Smyth, the latest editor of Franklin's works, has, with his usual diligence, compiled the names that appear most frequently on the visiting cards, found among Franklin's papers. They are such significant names as those of La Duchesse d'Enville, her son Le Duc de la Rochefoucauld, M. Turgot, Duc de Chaulnes, Comte de Crillon, Vicomte de Sarsfield, M. Brisson, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Comte de Milly, Prince des Deuxponts, Comte d'Estaing, Marquis de Mirabeau and M. Beaugeard, Treasurer of the State of Brittany.
The Diary of John Adams reveals Franklin and himself dining on one occasion with La Duchesse d'Enville, and "twenty of the great people of France," on another with M. Chalut, one of the farmers-general, and the old Marshal Richelieu, and "a vast number of other great company," on another with the Prince de Tingry, Duc de Beaumont, of the illustrious House of Montmorency, and on another with La Duchesse d'Enville, along with her daughter and granddaughter, and dukes, abbots and the like so numerous that the list ends with a splutter of et ceteras. "Dukes, and bishops and counts, etc." are the overburdened words with which Adams closes his list of the guests at a dinner given by Vergennes, the minister of Louis XVI.
But, after all, it was the circle of intimate friends, to which Franklin promised to introduce John Jay on the arrival of Jay in France, that constitutes the chief interest of the former's social life in France. Three of these friends were Madame Helvétius, Madame Brillon and the Comtesse d'Houdetot. With Madame Helvétius, he dined every Saturday at Auteuil, with Madame Brillon twice a week at the home of her husband, not far from his, and with the Comtesse d'Houdetot frequently at Sanois, in the Valley of Montmorency. Madame Helvétius was known to her friends as "Our Lady of Auteuil." She was the widow of Helvétius, the philosopher, who had left her a handsome fortune, amassed by him when one of the farmers-general. In testimony of her affection for him, she kept under glass, on a table in her bedroom, a monument erected to his memory, with his picture hung above it. Her salon was one of the best-known in France, and it was maintained on such a sumptuous scale that, in one of his letters, after his return to America, Franklin told her that often in his dreams he placed himself by her side on one of her thousand sofas. It was at Auteuil that he passed some of his happiest hours in France, plying its mistress with flattery and badinage, and enjoying the music of her two daughters, known to the household as "the Stars," and the conversation of her friends, the younger Cabanis, and the Abbés Morellet and de la Roche. One of the amusements of the inner circle at Auteuil was to read aloud to each other little trifles, full of point and grace which they had composed. Thus, though after Franklin had returned to America, was ushered into the world the Abbé Morellet's Very Humble Petition to Madame Helvétius from her Cats—animals which appear to have had a position in her home as assured as that of "the Stars" or the Abbés themselves; and several of the wittiest of the productions, which Franklin called his Bagatelles, originated in the same way. If homage, seasoned with delightful humor and wit, could have kept the mistress of Auteuil, at the age of sixty, from incurring the malice of the female contemporary, who, we are told by Miss Adams, compared her with the ruins of Palmyra, that of Franklin would assuredly have done it. When she complained that he had not been to see her for a long time, he evaded the reproach of absence by replying, "I am waiting, Madame, until the nights are longer." Whatever others might think, she was to him, "his fair friend at Auteuil," who still possessed "health and personal charms." What cleverer application could there be than this of the maxim of Hesiod that the half is sometimes more than the whole:
Very dear Friend, we shall have some good music to-morrow morning at breakfast. Can you give me the pleasure of sharing in it. The time will be half past ten. This is a problem that a mathematician will experience some trouble in explaining; In sharing other things, each of us has only one portion; but in sharing pleasures with you, my portion is doubled. The part is more than the whole.
On another occasion, when Madame Helvétius reminded Franklin that she expected to meet him at Turgot's, he replied, "Mr. Franklin never forgets any party at which Madame Helvétius is expected. He even believes that, if he were engaged to go to Paradise this morning, he would pray for permission to remain on earth until half-past one, to receive the embrace promised him at the Turgots."
Poor Deborah seems altogether lost, and forgotten when we read these lines that he wrote to the Abbé de la Roche:
I have often remarked, when reading the works of M. Helvétius, that, although we were born and reared in two countries so remote from each other, we have frequently had the same thoughts; and it is a reflection very flattering to me that we have loved the same studies, and, as far as we have both known them, the same friends, and the same woman.