We are waiting with the greatest impatience for your news; the newspapers have worried us about your fate. Some had it that you had been taken by the Algerians, others claimed that you were in Morocco and that you endured your enslavement with all the resolution of a philosopher. These rumors were fortunately unconfirmed, but we will not be reassured until we see your handwriting dated from Philadelphia. If you knew how sad we have been since your departure, and how often we speak of you! With your friends! How we will always speak of you! There is no one, not even Castor [the dog], who knows what to do with himself on Sunday mornings.

Once again we feared for a moment for war with the Emperor; he had trouble making definitive agreements with the Dutch. Fortunately everything was finally arranged and signed. The King of Prussia, moreover, who is playing a very fine role at the moment, is at the head of a confederation of almost all the German states in order to oppose all expansion by the states of the Emperor. And your compatriots, have they finally settled their opinions on some solid base? Are they digesting their liberty well? Ah, they have such need of you!

Would you believe that we here have arrested a cardinal prince, bishop of Strasbourg, in his ceremonial robes, and put him in the Bastille? This cardinal, whose income is more than 1,200,000 a year, purchased a diamond necklace for 1,600,000, on credit from a jeweller's, on the Queen's account. When accused by the Queen in front of the King, the cardinal produced a note which he claimed he believed to have been written and signed by her. The Paris Parliament is taking up his trial, and he will be judged after the vacation; he is in the difficult dilemma of being able to prove that he isn't a crook only by demonstrating that he is a fool.

Mademoiselle Brillon is getting married on the 20th of this month. She is marrying M. Vialal de Malachel, son of a secretary to the King; he is a counsellor to the court of excise, which he will leave in order to take up the position of M. Brillon, at whose home the new couple will live.

All your friends cannot be consoled about your departure; each day I am asked ten times for news of you. They all embrace you tenderly.

I hope that you will have worked during your voyage, that your composition is finished, and that you will send it to me. You will not permit some hack to make up from scratch the life of Monsieur Franklin. My wife and my daughter join me in holding you, all three of us, in our arms; do not forget that no one in the world loves you as much as us.