Your letter of April 15 has found me deep in the Pyrenees, my illustrious and dear colleague, and I am touched by the part you take in our loss of a dear and valued sister whom misfortune has taken from me and whose death spread a cruel mourning over the entire family, the bitterness of which only time may lessen. The courage of my honored mother and her tenderness for us have overcome her sadness, and her for us. I left her spending her summer in the country outside Paris, in order to come here with my wife, who needs the local waters. She has felt their beneficial effects, and both she and my mother, to whom I have forwarded your message, thank you for remembering them.

My distance from Paris prevented me from profiting from the short visit that M. Payne made there; he is now in London, and I hope to make up for this time during his stay with us this winter. Your friendship with him would be an excellent recommendation, even if he did not have that of a reputation founded on such grounds as his excellent work Common Sense.

I very much appreciate the details that you gave me about your health and your political situation. M. le Veillard, in sending me your letter, added some news that interested me very much. May your health hold strong, by the wish of those who admire and cherish you in Europe as well as in America; and may the illnesses, to which human nature condemns great men as much as any others, not bring too much suffering to the evening of your life.

Your unanimous reelection to the office of the Pennsylvania Presidency should bring hope for the preservation of the excellent principles upon which the constitution of this state was founded. Your name next to M. Washington's, on the list of the Convention which will readjust the Confederation, assures that the new constitution of your federal Republic will be built on sound principles, and receive from every state the approbation which these two names, so rightfully famous and dear to all American hearts, should bring to it. Yes, you have the sweet satisfaction of completing this great document; of securing for your country the preservation of the liberty you gave it; and of making the United States of America the model of all other states, by the excellence of its federal constitution as well as those of each state, and of the laws which support all of them. I await the results of this important assembly with great impatience. What you said about the instability of popular opinion is quite true, but if there should be an exception in this regard, it should be for you. I am confident that popular opinion will continue to support you, and that your fellow citizens will never cease to recognize him to whom they are so greatly indebted.

I left Paris immediately after the closing of the Assembly of Notables, and I am too far away to give you fresh news of our public events. M. le Veillard surely passed on to you the results of our Committees, the first half of which has just been announced; he probably also told you of the latest events in the Assembly, which are not yet over. The creation of our Provincial Assemblies is a little too cluttered with orders and etiquette to succeed in the eyes of a philosopher and an American, but for an old state like ours, it is a good start to involve citizens in the administration of their own affairs, and to have obtained the annual report of financial operations by the government.

Your friend the Marquis de Lafayette is Member of the Provincial Assembly of Auvergne, and I am honored to have been named the President of the Assembly for the District of La Rochelle; accordingly I leave day after tomorrow for Saintes, where the Assembly begins on September 6. I would be happy if my new role allowed me to provide some means to start up trade again between the United States and this part of France, which has stopped since the loss of Canada, and which could be very advantageous for your country as well as ours; and to increase even more the mutual relations between France and America.

M. de Condorcet and I have indeed received, both for the Academy and ourselves, copies of your Transactions, and I hope that by now you have our letters of thanks for the illustrious American Philosophical Society, for the h[onor] which it has done us by making us fellow Members. I am particularly [certain] to owe this to the friendship of its founder, and to share it with my friend M. de Condorcet.

I expect that M. Payne has handed him his bridge project, and the Academy will certainly be eager to reply to your views as well as his, and will discuss it in depth. M. Perronet is still alive, and M. de Condorcet has introduced him to M. Payne. Please give my regards to Messieurs your [grandsons.] Farewell, my dear and illustrious colleague, please accept the sincere homage of my respect and friendship, which I love to repeat and which I dedicated to you for life