You must no longer care for me, my dear friend; seven months without writing to me! Are you adopting, putting into practice the maxim which I have often heard you laughingly assert, that there is nothing real but the present, and that the absent are always in the wrong? I could not agree with this, even in love. I have not had a letter from you since October 20; I have forwarded two to you from the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, to which you did not reply; I begged you to have me admitted to the Philadelphia Philosophical Society, and I hope for the success of this request with a sort of impatience, but I await with a much greater impatience some renewed evidence of your affection for me.

I sold your fortepiano for 12 louis. I gave six of these to the priest, for which the receipt is attached; M. the Comte Raymont de Narbonne took the other six for the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. He was to send me the secretary's receipt, but I do not have it yet. This Lodge of the Nine Sisters did a good deed; they proposed a prize of 600 l.t. for a eulogy of the living Monsieur Benjamin Franklin. This proposal received a unanimous vote, but the exclusion of the brothers of the Lodge from the competition aroused the greatest protests.

As for me, I will not stop asking for the memoir which you promised me, and loving you with all my heart for all my life