I just learned, my illustrious doctor, that a packet-boat is leaving at any moment from Le Havre, and I am hurrying in order to take advantage of this.

I am delighted to learn that your health is still holding up very well. M. Paine gave me the greatest pleasure in telling me about the procession which brought you to the Pennsylvania States Assembly; he told me that you walked for more than a mile, one cannot do any better than that. It is admirable to see that, in the midst of your great national affairs, you still find the time to build houses. But I think that one of the great qualities which make men expeditious is the facility of thought that you have: Caesar would never have accomplished all that he did, things which will amaze the universe forever, without this marvelous facility, which allowed him to dictate to five or six secretaries at once.

I imagine that you received the translation of your letter to my brother, but I am going to have another edition made, the first one having been a flop, as we say, because of the method he chose to have it printed.

But, my illustrious doctor, I wanted to talk about M. Paine. I am truly obliged to you for having introduced him to me. His mind lives up exactly to his reputation, and he seems to have an excellent character which makes him very enjoyable company. You know how your recommendations are valued, but meeting him is enough to be inclined to do him all the little services that an old Parisian like myself can do for a foreigner. I brought him to dinner yesterday at M. de Malesherbes', in exactly the same house at the bottom of Montmartre where we dined a few years ago, when the Chevalier de La Luzerne left to go live in your country. This excellent man, M. de Malesherbes, received him as he deserves. But as he has returned to the Ministry, he had to leave us immediately after dinner to go to a Council meeting at Versailles. When I say that M. de Malesherbes has returned to the Council, this deserves explanation. You understand our institutions enough to know that a man only becomes a Minister of State by a simple order from the King to attend this Council. So, when he no longer receives this order, although he keeps the title of Minister of State, in reality he is no longer Minister. So, M. de Malesherbes just received this order, and he has also been named a member of the Council of Finances, a Council which, as you have learned from the news, has been formed since the Assembly of Notables. You can well imagine that we jumped on the chance to talk about you, both on this occasion and a little while earlier, when I told him what you had asked me to tell him. Similarly, I did not fail to tell M. de Buffon that his health made you say, like King Alphonse, that if you ruled the world or had the power to distribute happiness and misery, you would not have caused a moment's harm to this great man. I cannot tell you how grateful he was for this mark of your remembrance and for the flattering way in which you gave it to him; he asked me to tell you in return the most obliging things, and that it was a consolation for him in his suffering to learn that an illness which he shared with you was treating you favorably enough to leave you the time and the wherewithal to apply yourself to the great activities by which you crown your great destiny. As for himself, he is still in very bad shape. I could not be more upset for M. Paine that we have no more balloons, as he is dying to see one, but M. Bousboulon, whom you were able to meet here and who was manufacturing them in Javelle, has gone bankrupt, and the honest people involved in this enterprise, now have all kinds of other problems to tackle. There is no one but Blanchard who is upholding the honor of this fine invention; but there are those people who, traveling without proper knowledge or ideas, make the same trip a hundred times without bringing back any new information. Blanchard is to conduct an experiment in Nancy in a while, but M. Paine finds this too far to go to have the pleasure of seeing a balloon take off. As for what you ask me about M. Meusnier's book, my illustrious doctor, his book is only in manuscript and realistically it will not be published soon because the costs of printing and engraving will involve a considerable sum of money.

Your observations on what happened to the conductor on your house gave me great pleasure. I am planning to make it public within a few days. In all that you have done and in the conquests which you have been able to make over nature, revealing its secrets to us, you have been like Charles XII and other conquerors who take possession of empires only to give them to others. As fashion is the torch that guides us, lightning rods are spreading everywhere. And a fine proof that, in saying this, I am not slandering our lovable but frivolous nation, is all the arguments that one hears every day about these lightning rods.

M. Paine's model for a bridge has not yet arrived. I brought this worthy man to M. Perronet's, for you have been misinformed of his death and we laughed about it quite a bit. He tells us that they killed him in the Gazettes, quite as our old and respectable friend M. the Chevalier Pringle was killed in 1769. My illustrious doctor, you can let M. Manassés Cutler know that I put him in contact with MM. Jussieu and Thouin. The first is professor of botany in the King's Garden, and the second is head gardener of this Garden and currently a member of our Academy, your colleague and mine. I will reply to M. Cutler but unfortunately at the moment this is impossible. My brother received the Diploma from your illustrious Society and was doubly flattered, by this Society as well as by the honor it bestows on him to be your colleague. I did not fail to transmit to M. d'Angiviller his Diploma; he must have written you to thank you for it.

I am planning to send you by the first packet-boat everything you don't have yet from the Academy as well as a memoir by MM. Lavoisier, Morveau, Bertholet, and Fourcroy, containing a new chemical nomenclature about which I told you, but I am afraid that these gentlemen have forgotten Bacon's dictum, let's try to hurry less in order to go faster. Adieu, my illustrious colleague, please accept the sincere assurances of all the sentiments of attachment which I have devoted to you for life, and of all my wishes for your good health.