It has come to pass, my dear Papa, that one can no longer converse with you except as the devout do with celestial substances: without seeing, nor hearing, nor hoping to meet face to face until we exist in an order of things where everything which happens in this world will be foreign to us. Yet we enjoyed ourselves so much down here when we were around a nice lunch table together; whether we were discussing morals, politics, or philosophy; whether Our Lady of Auteuil awakened your flirtatiousness; or whether the Abbé Morellet fought us for the cream and built his arguments so well in order to prove to us what we didn't believe. Then we would have willingly renounced that other Paradise in order to preserve this one, and to live just as we were, for eternity. But another Paradise was waiting for you and calling for you in America. You have left this European one, in order to accomplish what Providence could not have done without you, in a country which she wants to render free and happy. We respect her intentions too much to complain that she causes others' happiness at the expense of our own. She makes up for it a little, in leaving us with your memory, which often fills our thoughts. We entrust to your children, your friends, and your good Americans the care of loving you, as we did; of diverting you in your old age, and paying you back for all the good you have done, and for all the good that you wished to do for humanity and for your compatriots. We like to imagine that you will be man's only benefactor who will have escaped his ingratitude. This will be, against the detractors of this modern age, an argument without reply in favor of the perfectibility of the human race.

Our Lady of Auteuil's health has been a little languishing all this spring. She is feeling much better now. For her convalescence, we gave her a party, to which all her friends, all the little stars, and close to four hundred people came. The best actors of the Comédie Française were eager to play for her the tragedy Philoctetes, translated from Sophocles, and the premier actress of the opera played The Maid Turned Mistress [La serva padrona], an opera put to music by the celebrated Pergolesi, the most famous Italian composer. Only you were missing to make the party complete, and to make it the most enjoyable which has ever been given. It was a party of pure friendship, which rarely occurs without vanity interfering.

You will surely learn the results of our Assembly of Notables from your newspapers. You will hear of the increase of our national debt in peacetime; of the remedy that is hoped for in the establishment and formation of provincial assemblies to be put in place in all parts of the Kingdom; and of our Parliaments' refusal of the stamp tax that caused your Revolution. The ferment of French opinion about political affairs is widespread. It is difficult to foresee the turn that all of this will take. On the one hand, there is the need for money; on the other, the people's misery and the refusal on the part of the chief state bodies to give new contributions. This is a troubling situation. There is civil war in Holland; the trouble is spreading in the Brabant provinces all along our borders. The Flemish absolutely do not accept the new constitutions that the Emperor wants to establish in their region. Everything is in ferment. Only financial chaos can save us from the necessity of the war that is menacing us.

Your cry of liberty rings out in all of Europe, even as far as Turkey. Your Assembly of Notables must surely operate more efficiently than ours. Your body politic is a vigorous sick-patient whose convalescence you only have to fortify, in prescribing for it a good diet; and capable doctors are proposing to make it adopt such a regimen. Our friend the archbishop of Bordeaux must have responded to you. He was in the Assembly of Notables. We only saw him at the end, and we passed a part of the day which he came to spend with us, in reading your letters, and in remembering you, as well as the marks of affection that you give us, and the happiness that you enjoy in your country and in the midst of your family. Keep us in mind sometimes when you talk to Messieurs Temple and Benjamin, the only ones whom we have some hope of seeing again in this country, the only ones who will still remind us of happy memories. We embrace you across the seas which separate us; I am for my part and for life, my very honorable friend, your devoted servant