"Bills are still coming in quantities.

You

will see by the inclosed letter the situation I am at at last brought into. . . . I shall be able to pay till the end of February, when, if I can get no more money, I must stop."

Ten days later he writes to Jay that his solicitations make him appear insatiable, that he gets no assurances of aid, but that he is " very sensible" of Jay's "unhappy situation," and therefore manages to send him $30,000, though he knows not how to replace it. In the sad month of March, 1782, Lafayette nobly helped Franklin in the disagreeable task of begging, but to little purpose; for at length there seemed a general determination to furnish no more money to the States. The fighting was over, and it seemed reasonable that the borrowing should be over likewise.

In February, 1782, Franklin says that Mr. Morris supposes him to have a sum "vastly greater than the fact," and has "given orders far beyond my abilities to comply with." Franklin was regarded as a miraculous orange which, if squeezed hard enough, would always yield juice! It could not have been reassuring, either, to have one of the American agents at this time ask to have 150,000 livres advanced to him at once; especially since the frankly provident gentleman based his pressing haste upon the avowed fear that, as business was going on, Franklin's embarrassments in money matters were likely to increase.

February 13, 1782, Livingston wrote a letter

which must have excited a grim smile. He comforts himself, in making more "importunate demands," by reflecting that it is all for the good of France! which thought, he says, may enable Franklin to "press them with some degree of dignity." Franklin's sense of humor was touched. That means, he says, that I am to say to de Vergennes: "Help us, and we shall not be obliged to you." But in some way or another, probably not precisely in this eccentric way, he so managed it that in March he wheedled the French government into still another, and a large, loan of 24,000,000 livres, payable quarterly during the year. March 9 he informs Morris "pretty fully of the state of our funds here, by which you will be enabled so to regulate your drafts as that our credit in Europe may not be ruined and your friend killed with vexation."

He now engaged to pay all the drafts which Jay should send to him, so that Jay could extricate himself honorably from those dread engagements which had been giving that harassed gentleman infinite anxiety at Madrid. Some of his acceptances had already gone to protest; but Franklin soon took them all up. By the end of March he began to breathe more freely; he had saved himself and his colleagues thus far, and now he hoped that the worst was over. He wrote to Morris: "Your promise that after this month no more bills shall be drawn on me keeps up my spirits and affords me the greatest satisfaction." By the following

summer the accounts between France and the States were in course of liquidation, and Franklin called the attention of Livingston to the fact that the king practically made the States a further present "to the value of near two millions. These, added to the free gifts before made to us at different times, form an object of at least twelve millions, for which no returns but that of gratitude and friendship are expected. These, I hope, may be everlasting." But liquidation, though a necessary preliminary to payment, is not payment, and does not preclude a continuance of borrowing; and in August we find that Morris was still pressing for more money, still drawing drafts, in happy forgetfulness of his promises not to do so, and still keeping Franklin in anxious dread of bankruptcy. By the same letter it appears that Morris had directed Franklin to pay over to M. Grand, the banker, any surplus funds in his hands! "I would do it with pleasure, if there were any such," said Franklin ; but the question was still of a deficit, not of a surplus.

December 14, 1782, finds Franklin still at the old task, preferring "the application so strongly pressed by the Congress for a loan of $4,000,000." Lafayette again helped him, but the result remained uncertain. The negotiations for peace were so far advanced that the ministers thought it time for such demands to cease. But probably he succeeded, for a few days later he appears to be remitting a considerable sum. Peace, however, was at

hand, and in one respect at least it was peace for Franklin as well as for his country, for even Congress could no longer expect him to continue borrowing. He had indeed rendered services not less gallant though less picturesque than those of Washington himself, vastly more disagreeable, and scarcely less essential to the success of the cause.

CHAPTER XIII.

HABITS OF LIFE AND OF BUSINESS: AN ADAMS INCIDENT.

JOHN ADAMS wielded a vivid and vicious pen; he neglected the Scriptural injunction: "Judge not," and he set honesty before charity in speech. His judgments upon his contemporaries were merciless; they had that kind of truthfulness which precluded contradiction, yet which left a sense of injustice; they were at once accurate and unfair. His strictures concerning Franklin are an illustration of these peculiarities. What he said is of importance because he said it, and because members of the Adams family in successive generations, voluminous contributors to the history of the country, have never divested themselves of the inherited enmity toward Franklin. During Adams's first visit to France the relationship between him and Franklin is described as sufficiently friendly rather than as cordial. December 7, 1778, in a letter to his cousin Samuel Adams, John thus described his colleague :

"The other you know personally, and that he loves his Ease, hates to offend, and seldom gives any opinion till obliged to do it. I know also, and it is necessary that