I shall hope, on my return, to meet here new powers for the consular convention, as, under those I have, it will be impossible to make the changes in the convention, which may be wished for.

I have the honor to be, with sentiments of the most perfect esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LII.—­TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE, February 28, 1787

TO THE MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.

Paris, February 28, 1787.

Dear Sir,

I am just now in the moment of my departure.  Monsieur de Montmorin having given us audience at Paris yesterday, I missed the opportunity of seeing you once more.  I am extremely pleased with his modesty, the simplicity of his manners, and his dispositions towards us.  I promise myself a great deal of satisfaction in doing business with him.  I hope he will not give ear to any unfriendly suggestions.  I flatter myself I shall hear from you sometimes.  Send your letters to my hotel as usual, and they will be forwarded to me.  I wish you success in your meeting.  I should form better hopes of it, if it were divided into two Houses instead of seven.  Keeping the good model of your neighboring country before your eyes, you may get on, step by step, towards a good constitution.  Though that model is not perfect, yet, as it would unite more suffrages than any new one which could be proposed, it is better to make that the object.  If every advance is to be purchased by filling the royal coffers with gold, it will be gold well employed.  The King, who means so well, should be encouraged to repeat these Assemblies.  You see how we republicans are apt to preach, when we get on politics.  Adieu, my dear friend.

Yours affectionately,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER LIII.—­TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE, March 20, 1787

TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE TESSE.

Nismes, March 20, 1787.

Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarree, like a lover at his mistress.  The stocking-weavers and silk-spinners around it, consider me as a hypochondriac Englishman, about to write with a pistol the last chapter of his history.  This is the second time I have been in love since I left Paris.  The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de Lay-Epinaye in Beaujolois, a delicious morsel of sculpture, by M. A. Slodtz.  This, you will say, was in rule, to fall in love with a female beauty:  but with a house!  It is out of all precedent.  No, Madam, it is not without a precedent, in my own history.  While in Paris, I was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm, and used to go to the Tuileries almost daily to look at it.  The loueuse des chaises, inattentive to my passion, never had the complaisance to place a chair there, so that, sitting on the parapet, and twisting my neck round to see the object of my admiration, I generally left it with a torticollis.