Ballons fripons (French Edition)

French translation of 'balloon'

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Of the miscellaneous pieces, The Way to Wealth and an essay on demography, Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, were the most influential. The latter essay was the only one to receive critical attention in the French press and the only one which stimulated Dubourg to extensive editorial comment.

To his translation Dubourg added a number of explanatory notes and a supplementary essay of his own, hoping by them to persuade Franklin to write further on the subject. Dubourg felt that Franklin's comments on Pennsyl- vania should be extended to generalizations on the population of the entire world; he accordingly presented ten demographic principles of his own, which portray a broader international and humanitarian vision than that of Franklin.

Dissenting from Franklin's observation that a nation is strengthened doubly by "increasing its own people, and diminishing its neighbours," Dubourg asserts that the advantages drawn from the misfortune of one's neighbors are often more imaginary than real, that the principles of justice and the sources of felicity are the same both for nations and for individuals. Mirabeau, however, who saw Franklin's essay before its appearance in print, wrote on a manuscript translation in his possession in , "Observations on population by Mr.

Franklin given by him to me before he had any notion of eco- nomics, and it is here apparent. Dubourg's title is literal and comprehensive: Le Pauvre Henri Son Aise. In this same year, , appeared the new translation of The Way to Wealth by Qu6tant, La Science du Bonhomme Richard, ou Moyen Facile de payer les impots, a translation that went through four editions in two years and at least five others before the end of the century. It was widely quoted in periodicals and extravagantly praised.

In this dress, La Science du Bonhomme Richard came to be almost universally considered a work of sublime morality, and its sen- tentious maxims were compared to those of Bacon and La Fontaine. Let us review the chronological record. The Way to Wealth appeared originally in Philadelphia in , was widely reprinted in America and England, but remained unheard of in France until when it appeared as part of Franklin's complete works. The editor, Dubourg, and one or two journalists recognized that it had literary merits beyond Franklin's other pieces, but it nevertheless fell into virtual neglect.

Then a brief four years later a new translation brought the work widespread attention and effusive praise. The conclusions are inevitable. A comparison will show almost at a glance that the two trans- lations vary hardly at all in literary merit.

Dubourg's is more literal and slightly more expansive than that of Qutant and in general preserves the constructions of the original, preferring to give an exact rendering of the English idiom than to convert to the French equivalent. These characteristics may be seen in the rendering of the English proverb, "God helps those who help themselves," which Franklin probably took from James Howell's Lexicon Tetraglotton, An anecdote concerning this proverb has been recorded by Sainte-Beuve and associated with Franklin.

Two prominent Jan- senists imprisoned in the Bastille were visited by the governor, who was in a very good humor. Finding them in a tranquil frame of mind, he remarked upon it, "Doesn't God say in his Gospel, 'God helps those who help themselves? But we may well smile in turn at their astonishment, Sainte-Beuve added, so much has our Christianity been human- ized since and translated a la Franklin. Franklin's appearance and personality created an immediate sen- sation, not only among the scientists and philosophers who had known and admired him previously, but among the diplomats on one side and the common people on the other.

Les Memoires secrets reported February 4, that he had been much wined, dined, and applauded by the savants. The details of his appear- ances at court and in public we may read in newspapers, personal letters, and private memoirs; all agreed on Franklin's paternal and benevolent demeanor. His portrait was offered for sale in medallions of various sizes, "some to be set in the lids of snuffboxes and some so small as to be worn in rings; and," he wrote to his daughter, "the numbers sold are incredible. These, with the pictures, busts, and prints of which copies upon copies are spread everywhere , have made your father's face as well known as that of the moon, so that he durst not do anything that would oblige him to run away, as his phiz would discover him wherever he should venture to show it.

No better evidence of this can be given than the following description of Franklin by Hilliard d'Auber- teuil, a fellow member with Franklin of the Masonic lodge of the Nine Sisters. Everything in him announced the simplicity and the innocence of primitive morals. Franklin had lain aside the wig which for- merly in England hid the nudity of his forehead and the useless adornment which would have left him at the level of the other English.

He showed to the astonished multitude a head worthy of the brush of Guide [a painter of old men] on an erect and vigorous body clad in the simplest of garments. His eyes were shadowed by large glasses and in his hand he carried a white cane. He knew how to be impolite without being rude, and his pride seemed to be that of nature. Such a person was made to excite the curiosity of Paris. The people clustered around as he passed and asked, "Who is this old peasant who has such a noble air?

Franklin himself, however, never had such a view of his work. There is little doubt that he included much of it to sell almanacs and that he gave little or no thought to either its practical value or moral tone. We have already pointed out that The Way to Wealth was drawn from the pages of Poor Richard's Almanac of previous years, that it was a careful selection of those passages inculcating thrift and industry.

The complete Poor Richard does more than advocate worldly pru- dence; indeed, much of its philosophy is contradictory. In gen- eral, the sayings are bawdy and practical in the early years; para- doxically, moral and cynical in the later. Several of them were derived ultimately from La Rochefoucauld. The French journalists who praised Bonhomme Richard for his sublime morality would have been surprised to learn that he had formerly advised his Philadelphia townsmen: Love your Neighbour; yet don't pull down your Hedge.

His attitude toward sex, for example, is more cynical than sublime. You cannot pluck roses without fear of thorns Nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns. Avarice and happiness never saw each other, how then should they become acquainted. Dog's dung and silver marks Are all one at the day of judgment.

Despite the many editions and periodical reprints of Qutant's version, other translations followed. In Lausanne, The Way to Wealth appeared under the title Manuel de Philosophie Pratique, Pour seruir de suite a la Science du Bonhomme Richard as the nucleus of a collection of little-known English moral frag- ments. A fourth translation by J. Castra appeared in his edition of Franklin's autobiography in 17Q8. This translator is unknown. Most French critics admired Bonhomme Richard for its sim- plicity, its appeal to the common man, and its sublime morality.

Brissot, who had previously met Franklin in Pennsylvania and had praised him extensively in an account of his voyages, devoted an article in his periodical Le Patriote Francois to Poor Richard y portraying it as an indirect cause of the French Revolution. As Franklin had established liberty in America, Penn had established the republic.

Franklin in particular influenced his age through his simple, naive, and familiar style, which was as useful to the con- mon people as it was agreeable to those of literary culture. The Way to Wealth, which Brissot describes as proverbial exhortation, he concludes is a masterpiece of popular literature. In a later address at the Jacobin's Club, Brissot repeated his political inter- pretation: Behold how Poor Richard and Franklin were always friends of the people.

Apparently referring to Dubourg's translation, he stated that "Les Proverbes du Vieux Henri, la Science du Bonhomme Richard are in the hands of the learned and the ignorant: On the one hand, he regretted that a young and pretty maiden should show in her demeanor nothing but good sense, for at the age of polite ac- complishments too much reason leads to misanthropy.

On the other hand, he applauded her resolution since she gave endless pleasure by preaching in Poor Richard's style; even those whom she condemned by her principles involuntarily admired her moral sobriety. Grimm in his Correspondance litteraire was almost the only critic to say anything adverse about Bonhomme Richard although his general opinion is favorable.

Impressed chiefly by the eco- nomic features of the work, he pointed out its grand principle that personal extravagance may be more onerous than public taxes. Jean Baptiste Say, famous economist during the period of the Direc- tory and authority on public education, specifically asserted in reference to Franklin that practical economics and high morality are mutually dependent. In a work of Utopian fiction, Olbie, ou essai sur les moyens d'ameliorer les moeurs d'une nation, , he describes the erecting of temples celebrating the principal virtues, 17 with wall inscriptions of moral precepts chosen from among the most useful and practical that literature has to offer, including maxims of political economy, since they are conducive to morality.

By this means, farmers, traders, and manufacturers who travel to other communities may read these maxims and may be apprised of their own true interests. Among examples of proverbs notable for their simple forcefulness and ease of re- tention, Say gives one each from La Fontaine and Bacon and six from Franklin. La Science du Bonhomme Richard is a masterpiece of good sense, of concision, of simplicity one could almost add, of finesse, if a word so decried could be applied to the most sublime, the most useful notions of political and private economy.

One senses how he had been obliged to make this light frame- work interesting by the manner in which he has carried it out. At every moment one perceives his profound knowledge of the qualities and eccentricities of men. There are few works which comprise so many things in such a small volume. At every instant one encounters one of these maxims which as- tonish by their justness, their concision, their profundity. That which an unpracticed mind does not grasp under one form, it grasps under another. One may say of Franklin as has been said of La Fontaine from another point of view: Reporting on the offer, the Commission remarked, "To have named this work is to have eulogized it.

Du Pont de Nemours, perhaps with this transaction still in his mind, prescribed The Way to Wealth as a textbook for the Amer- ican educational system. In a discussion of national education in the United States, written while du Pont was in New York, he advocated The Way to Wealth as the only literary work in existence suited to the elementary grades; 21 an adequate ABC, he felt, was the most difficult type of textbook to prepare.

I know only a single book which has the grace, the lightness, the deep sense, the art of dissimulating art, which this genre of work requires. It is by Franklin. It is la Science du Bonhomme Richard. It has been imitated in France by the honest Mathon de la Cour in le Testament de Fortune Ricard; but what a great difference in talent and how little application it has to childhood. The Testa- ment has as its aim merely to demonstrate the value of thrift in spending and the accumulating of interest from capital and then to show the useful projects a government with several millionaires may undertake.

POOR RICHARD 49 Franklin himself knew le Testament de Fortune Ricard and wrote to Mathon de la Cour July 9, that he had read it with pleasure and conceived a high opinion of its author; in- deed, it had such a strong influence upon him that he later at- tributed to it the impulse which led him to provide in his will for a trust fund of sterling for the cities of Boston and Philadelphia to be used in aiding "young beginners in busi- ness.

Bastiat wrote to one of his friends at the age of 26, exulting over the discovery of a volume of Franklin's moral and political miscellanies, "I am so enthused over it that I intend to follow the same method to become as good and as happy as he.

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At this period in life, the young man needs reading material devoted exclusively to his needs, to satisfy his zest for noble thoughts and philosophic systems. The editor, in reference to the pieces that he had selected with Bon- homme Richard as their nucleus, concluded that "morality is above all sophisms and essentially related to the maintenance of public felicity because of its direct influence on the happiness of individuals.

A common printer [Franklin] did for America what the wisest governments have had the arrogance to neglect or the weakness to fear. He later gathered all of these lessons in the work so famous under the title of Bonhomme Richard, a unique work in which one cannot help recognizing the superior man without it being possible to cite a single passage where he allows his superiority to be perceived. Noth- ing in the thoughts nor in the style is above the least developed intelligence, but the philosophic mind easily discovers noble aims and profound intentions.

The expression is always natural, often indeed commonplace, and all the wit is in the choice of ideas. In order that his lessons might be most useful he did not reveal to his readers that a philosopher of the town had condescended to instruct them and he hid himself under the name of Poor Richard, pretending to be ignorant and humble like them. In the following year, Joseph Antoine Cerutti, famous Revo- lutionary figure, himself an exponent of adult education, pub- lished in his La Feuille Villageoise a similar interpretation of Franklin's career.

Al- though apparently without any specific knowledge concerning Franklin's extended editorial supervision of his newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette, Cerutti felt that his own enterprise was similar to Franklin's. It was by this essentially simple proceeding that he succeeded in rectifying the common ideas and in creating in some measure for POOR RICHARD 51 the multitude a new spirit capable equally of braving perils and of avoiding excesses. His paper had an enormous success; it fell into the hands of the ignorant and the intelligentsia; some of the ar- ticles it contained, worthy of Voltaire and of Montesquieu, have circulated throughout the entire world.

Among them is La Science du Bonhomme Richard, a science made for our villagers. Poor Richard had absolutely no connection with the Gazette, and the famous po- litical tracts and moral pieces that contributed to Franklin's vogue in Paris were all written subsequently to his period as newspaper editor. While Cerutti gives a fair statement of Franklin's pur- poses in the Gazette, he is completely mistaken about his achieve- ments, for although Franklin wrote a number of pieces of genuine literary merit for the Gazette, they were not at the time widely read.

Cerutti by nature cared more for embellishment than for ac- curacy. The nature of Cerutti's treat- ment is well revealed in the conclusion of the piece, to which Cerutti gave a novel twist completely contrary to Franklin's end- ing. According to Cerutti, As the old preacher finished his harangue, the people listened with mouths agape and smiling. They clapped their hands when he fin- ished speaking. Indeed they did even better; taking advantage of his advice, some ran to pay their debts, others went to take up their work, and still others remained for the sale, but bought only necessary articles; and all paid their taxes through the savings o virtue and the reform of vice.

American national prosperity profited through the science and the proverbs of Bonhomme Richard. Since this famous discourse, no one in America pronounces a moral sen- tence, a political maxim, an aphorism of jurisprudence, a historical apophthegm, a popular proverb, a popular adage, or any kind of saying, without adding "as Poor Richard says.

In France, Bonhomme Richard became so closely associated with brisk, colloquial style that a periodical came out in with the title Le Bonhomme Richard aux Bonnes-Gens. Anti-revolutionary propaganda, it ran to only two issues, but in imitating the homespun style of Poor Richard, it attempted to reconcile workers, servants, and the unemployed with the status quo and to forfend further disturbances.

During Year III of the revolutionary epoch appeared another periodical under the title of Journal du Bonhomme Richard, a political daily, presenting opinions corresponding to those of Bonneville and Fauchet.

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The author, Antoine F. Lemaire, introduced Bon- homme Richard as a man with normal human characteristics and from time to time allowed him to present his moral thoughts. In a periodical dedicated entirely to the theater, for example, an author began a letter in the year after the Quetant translation with the phrase, "Bon- homme Richard is indeed right in saying," and ended the same letter with another proverb and the words, "as Bonhomme Richard also says.

Franklin, who wrote at least one ritual for his own private devotions and collaborated in the preparing of another for public use, would probably have been amazed to see his utilitarian proverbs regarded as a: The editors apparently received inspiration or moral strength from the stark homily, spaced in the fashion of prayer books or meditations. Par exemple, notre paresse nous prend deux fois autant que le gouvernement; Notre orgueil, trois fois; Et notre imprudence, quatre fois autant encore.

It may be worth noting that the section which the Theophilan- thropists changed most radically from the Quetant version is the only one in which Franklin departs from the theme of prudential economy to suggest the higher theme of social benevolence. Franklin had stated that the good things of prosperity were of little value without the blessings of heaven, and he exhorted his readers to petition these for themselves and to care for their neighbors who lacked material and spiritual comfort, giving as an example the transition of Job from poverty to happiness.

Ce sont d'excellentes choses la verite, mais elles vous seront tout-a-fait inutiles, si vous n'avez, avant tout, les benedictions du Ciel. The Theophilanthropists, perhaps because of their deistical no- tions, deleted the references to prayer and to Job. N'allez pas cependant vous confier uniquement votre Industrie, k votre vigilance et k votre economic.

Ce sont d'excellentes choses, k la verite; mais il faut encore votre bonheur les benedictions du Ciel. Rendez-vous en dignes, par la pratique de toutes les vertus; ne soyez pas insensibles aux besoins de vos freres, mais donnez-leur des consolations et des secours. If taken seriously, The Way to Wealth must be condemned as a handbook of bourgeois respectability. That Franklin himself did not take it seriously, the narrative elements with which he adorned it are ample proof. They seem to have considered the work a com- panion piece to Franklin's Liturgy on the Universal Principles of Religion and Morality, , written in collaboration with David Williams, which the Theophilanthropists adopted almost in its entirety in This respect for Franklin bordering upon adulation may be perceived also in the previously-mentioned imitation of Poor Richard's Almanac entitled Calendrier de Philadelphie, on Con- stitutions de Sancho Panga et du Bon-Homme Richard, en Pen- sylvanie, This work is a calendar in the sense that the book is divided into twelve major sections, one for each month, and the subsections correspond to the days of the month.

The con- tents, however, comprising a maxim or subject of meditation for each day, are not primarily proverbs and wise sayings, like Frank- lin's, but moral and philosophical pensees, in structure more like Pascal's, though in the liberal and deistical principles they set forth, almost antithetical to Pascal's. This work has been attrib- uted to Dr.

Barbeu Dubourg, and there is good reason for be- lieving that it is his in part; many of the maxims are taken from the Petit code de la raison humaine, a deistical work definitely known to be Dubourg's. It is hard to imagine that Dubourg would use his own translation as the source of quotations in the text of the work and at the same time use a rival translation in its en- tirety in an introduction.

The probable explanation is that Du- bourg himself compiled the almanac section and that the editor or printer added the introduction in order to swell the contents of the work and make it more readily salable.

Video: pronunciation of 'balloon'

The evidence that the introduction and the body of the Galen- drier are by different hands explains an obvious esthetic and in- tellectual incompatibility between the two sections. The printer may have considered the introduction a scintillating and original jeu d'esprit, but the situation is clumsy and artificial and the humor forced.

It can be justified merely on the grounds that through it Sancho is enabled to harangue a multitude with a translation of The Way to Wealth, but even the introducing of Franklin's proverbs is of doubtful value. Franklin's melange of practical morality does not blend very well with Dubourg's broader and more philosophical maxims in the body of the work. Everyone, the au- thor asserts, is acquainted with his brilliant career as governor of the island of Barataria, and with his celebrated judicial skill worthy to be ranked with Solomon's. Like Solomon, he possessed a mind stored with proverbs, particularly those illustrating and glorifying prudence.

After the death of his master Don Quixote, Sancho, having had too much taste for knight errantry to remain content with the mediocrity of life in his simple village with its curate and barber, revisited the cavern of Montesinos to renew his acquaintance with the enchanter Parasaragaramus. In a proverb-crammed speech, Sancho complains of his ennui and implores the enchanter for surcease.

The latter replies that all will be well; Sancho has followed destiny in coming to the magic cavern. He is to remain there during the passage of the centuries until awakened to become the legislator for a populous nation, where his eminent good sense and his storehouse of proverbs will then make his regime as successful as the one he had enjoyed on the island of Barataria.

His new subjects are to be primitive Christians, who will never swear, lie, nor make war. The time will come when they must be defended against a race of mis- creants, who, under the pretext that these primitive moralists have descended from their kinsmen, will seek to ravish their liberties and seize half of their property. These Christians are saints, but saints not canonized by virtue of services rendered to the popes. After his forecasted sleep of centuries, Sancho reawakens in Philadelphia in the company of Poor Richard, the almanac- maker. As the two stroll through the city, the latter explains the measures by which the English are seeking to confiscate more than half of the Philadelphia income by taxing tea and requir- ing that stamps be affixed to all documents.

When he asks Sancho to use his legislative skill and knowledge of proverbs in behalf of his townsmen, Sancho recommends first of all that everything that serves only for ornamentation must be suppressed, or at least be permitted only to thieves and courtesans. Happening upon an auction at which nothing but ornaments is offered for sale, Sancho finds confirmation of his fear that love of luxury is the source of the nation's evils.

At the conclusion of this melange of proverbs, everyone in the audience applauds, praises the good sense and reason of the speech, and congratulates the speaker. Just as Poor Richard begins to weep with joy at the thought of his dear towns- men renouncing their vanities and occupying themselves hence- forth with useful pursuits, the auctioneer announces the begin- ning of the sale, and all the beholders rush madly to buy. Sancho and Richard retreat in sorrow to Richard's house, where they console themselves with food and drink and speculate on the means of converting their errant fellow citizens to reason.

This episode of Sancho and Richard is not only clumsy, but inconsistent. The tergiversation of Sancho's audience at the con- clusion of the tale may have seemed an amusing touch, but it obviously nullifies everything the enchanter Parasaragaramus POOR RICHARD 57 had previously said concerning the primitive morality of the Quakers. The trouble comes from mixing two themes. Franklin had suggested a boycott of all British goods as a means of de- feating the Stamp Acts, and the beginning of the tale seems to be designed to prepare the reader to interpret Sancho's harangue as an attack on importations only.

The Way to Wealth was writ- ten long before the Stamp Acts, however, and it denounces do- mestic luxury as well as imported; hence, it does not really serve as a rejoinder to the Stamp Acts. Also, as a reviewer in the Cour- rier de I' Europe points out, it is out of keeping with the sober moral tone of the work to introduce Sancho Panga, who inevi- tably suggests ideas of pleasantry and ridicule.

Although it is Dubourg's most original and imagina- tive work, he is forced by the rigid censorship to keep up the fiction that it is a translation. In the preface he expresses fear that his translation may not be exact or agreeable, and that the sentiments of a pretended religious reformer may not be relished in a monarchical and Catholic state. He asserts in defense that wise and judicious readers of the work have assured him that it contains no sophisms or sarcasms against essential doctrines of religion and that it demonstrates, moreover, that a simple mon- archy is the only form of government which may render a great nation happy and flourishing.

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True enough, the almanac does not praise democracy at the expense of monarchy, for Dubourg sincerely believed that mon- archy was the best form of government for France. Despite his pretended concern for Catholicism, however, the work can be called nothing less than anti-Catholic.

Dubourg devotes more space to religion than to any other three subjects, and of this space, about half is devoted to deistical theories and the other half to attacks on Catholic doctrines and institutions. Monasticism in particular aroused his ire, reflected in his charges that monastic life encourages nothing but laziness, that it is expensive and un- productive, that it defies nature in requiring celibacy, and that it thrives on the wealth of others.

Despite the disclaimers in his preface, Dubourg even attacks doctrine. Dubourg has many other comments on the luxury of the church, on its lust for money, and on its fanaticism. He also gives his own deistical view of what true religion should be. As a contrast to the Catholic system, Dubourg makes several comments about his favorites, the Quakers, praising their sobriety, their pacifism, their refusing to swear, their simple faith, and their high morality.

His system of deism is sketched in nearly complete form in the Calendrier, many of the entries being identical with passages in his Petit code. Franklin is cited more than any of the others; The Way to Wealth is seen to be the inspiration of the French Calendrier both in spirit and in form. Other editions of the Calendrier appeared, the last in under the title Almanack de Philadelphie, in which the intro- duction is cut just at the point where Sancho is about to quote The Way to Wealth. Al- though some passages are repeated from the edition, some are completely different.

This edition also has a new preface obviously not written by Dubourg with the following tribute to Franklin. Franklin, under the name of Poor Richard and under the com- monplace form of an almanac yearly introduced into households, circulated the precepts of a salutary morality to citizens and heads of families. The alliance of all public and private duties was the basis of these annual lessons. For he wished to make his fellow- citizens enemies of despotism, submissive to law, jealous of their independence as well as industrious, upright, and temperate. He had recognized the intimate relation between the private virtues and the civic virtues, of liberty with morals, of particular interest with general interest; and to establish the happiness of his country upon the indissoluble union of these diverse elements was the effort of all his life.

This paragraph epitomizes the impression that Poor Richard made upon French thought. Fifty years after Dubourg's trans- lation, the fallacy was still current that Franklin had considered his almanac a means of inculcating moral precepts and that it had political significance. Both concepts are completely false but will probably continue to be ineradicably associated with the Franklin legend. In both England and America, The Way to Wealth accounted for a large measure of Franklin's contemporary literary reputa- tion, but nowhere except in France was it taken seriously as a work of sublime morality.

Indeed, largely as a result of this work, at least one Englishman considered Franklin as "a philosophical Quaker full of mean and thrifty maxims. Notes to this chapter begin on page Franklin assumed Quaker garb, adopted an extreme simplicity of manner, and affected a grave demeanor, quite out of keeping with his natural fun-loving disposition. In a sense, Franklin's public character as diplomat and statesman represented Father Abraham in action. The story of Franklin's diplomatic career in France belongs to the history of the American Revolution and cannot be com- pletely told as long as hundreds of official documents in various archives remain unpublished.

The influence of Franklin's po- litical activities upon French-American literary relations and upon his own reputation, however, has little to do with these manuscript sources. For this subject we must turn to contempo- rary printed works. Of particular interest are reports concerning his negotiations at Versailles, tributes to his political talents and principles, and propaganda pieces that he himself inspired.

The broad outlines are clear and consistent in all contemporary reports: Silas Deane, the original commissioner, created little interest and enjoyed scant success; Franklin, who succeeded him, won from the moment of his arrival a fantastic renown and the adulation of the people. At first when the British seemed to possess military supremacy, he remained in seclusion and could not be openly received at official functions. After Burgoyne's de- feat and the treaty of alliance, however, he was celebrated every- where, including the court, and became a popular idol.

The most widely read or at least the most widely quoted contemporary account of Franklin's reception in France was the M6moires secrets, which periodically presented colorful episodes concerning one phase or another of Franklin's personality. The most ambitious attempt to incorporate the record of Franklin's negotiations into a literary framework, however, was a collection of political comment, gossip, and literary criticism entitled Uespion anglois, a blend of fanciful situations with actual docu- ments and eyewitness accounts.

Inspired by Uespion turc of Marana and something on the order of Montesquieu's Lettres persanesj or Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, the collection has less satire and moralizing, more gossip and politics. Parts of this letter were printed also in the Memoires secrets under dif- ferent dates January 17, February 4 , from which latter source they have been widely quoted and paraphrased ever since.

The first two paragraphs in particular are among the most famous ever written about Franklin in France. Franklin, who arrived a short time ago from the English colonies, is much sought after and entertained, not only by his learned colleagues, but by everyone who can gain access to him, for he shows himself rarely and lives in a seclusion which is said to be prescribed by the government. This Quaker wears the full dress of his sect. He has a handsome physiognomy, glasses always on his eyes, very little hair, a fur cap, which he always wears on his head, no powder, but a neat appearance.

Extremely white linen and a brown habit are his sole ornaments. He carries as his only defense a cane in his hand. He is very circumspect in public concerning the news from his country, which he praises constantly. He says that heaven, jealous of its beauty, sent the scourge of war.

Our free thinkers have adroitly sounded him on his religion, and they maintain that they have discovered that he was of their own, that is, that he had none at all. There has been no lack of prints of Franklin, whose portrait has become the fashionable New Year's gift for this year.

This new representative of the Insurgents, moreover, has not yet appeared at Versailles. It is believed that this has been agreed upon in order not to upset the British Ambassador, who has made vig- orous protests on the subject and who would have wished that Franklin had not been admitted to the capital or even that he had been sent out of France as soon as he arrived.

If he sees our min- isters, it is at Paris, it is at night, it is in the greatest secrecy. But he has frequent conferences with Messrs. Beaumarchais and le Ray de Chaumont. The first is the bow-wow of Monsieur and Madame de Maurepas and most likely the go-between. The second is an ardent, industrious and greedy man, who would grasp, if he could, the commerce of the thirteen united colonies, for himself alone. There follows after this genuine letter an imaginary dialogue between Franklin and the pretended English spy, who had pur- portedly known Franklin in England, and who petitions him for an interview, which is granted at Franklin's residence.

The Englishman assures his host that he is filled with admiration for the determination of the colonists to resist British tyranny, but wonders whether they did not go too far in publishing their Declaration of Independence, which removed all possibility of reconciliation and left no possibility of reunion with England except through conquest and slavery. Franklin replies that there were wise men among them who had similar thoughts some who still retain them but independence was forced by necessity.

With- out it, they could never have hoped for military aid from France. And without it, France would have continued to enrich its com- merce and would have been pleased to see both sides exhaust their men and resources. America needed France, Franklin fur- ther explains, but France did not need America. Vergennes had given him to understand that France could not offend England and thus instigate a war without the certainty that war would bring about a diminution of British power by the absolute and irrevocable separation of the colonies.

There was a further po- litical reason: Franklin answers that one of the reasons for his mission is to explain to the French that the American retreat was a necessary and strategic one; had they been able to defeat Howe, they would not have needed French aid at all. They lack equipment, arms, uniforms, and trained sol- diers but possess the courage and determination to fight a de- laying action until France provides the necessary material aid.

The Englishman then mentions rumors that the Americans have been deceived and disappointed by the indirect aid that France has hitherto furnished. Franklin declares that nothing could be more true. Not only do they sell their merchandise extremely dear, but they give us only their rejects. In regard to arms especially, they have given us only discarded muskets, which have become in our hands more deadly to those who carry them than to our enemies; as for personnel, America has been the sewer of France. In place of the experienced officers which we need, good artillerymen, skilled en- gineers, we have received only blackguards, swindlers, men ruined in reputation or head over heels in debt, or conceited fops, insult- ing our sincerity, our good nature, seeking to debauch our wives and our daughters, fitted to infect us with their own corruption, carrying vices until then unknown among us.

To the Englishman's remarks that they have had bad luck with their agents there could be little in common between the frivolous Beaumarchais and the austere republican Deane Frank- lin acknowledges the fact that the commissioners had not chosen Beaumarchais; the liaisons were begun with him and they were forced to continue with him. As the Englishman continues to cast more and more gloom over the chances of victory, suggesting that if the Americans lose because of the indifference or neglect of France, England may accord them advantageous terms provided that they promise to turn their efforts against France, Franklin indignantly retorts that they would never accept any offensive alliance with England, much less against France, their benefactor.

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The Englishman, in turn, asserts that he loves his own country and cannot help regretting the prospect of seeing France exalt herself on the ruins of England and Amer- ica. Franklin is forced to admit that France inwardly mocks at American suffering and calamities, that France is not aiding the Americans out of conviction of the justice of their cause nor out of desire to avenge the wrongs of suffering humanity, that secretly France regards them as rebels, and that France has behaved in even more tyrannical fashion than England toward her own colonies.

Relating a few circumstances partially exonerating the French, Franklin then concludes with the statement, "In politics as in medecine in crises endangering life, one seeks to remedy the greatest and the most urgent evil; we cannot foresee what is going to happen in a century or in fifty years. Although purely fictitious, this is a shrewd contemporary analysis of the situation that actually prevailed. Later historical research can add to these details little except the knowledge that France initiated negotiations with the colonists in a year before Franklin's voyage and that Franklin himself had at first been opposed to seeking French aid.

Franklin had been officially instructed not to show himself at public assemblies, and the celebrity-seekers who had attended the April public meeting of the Academy of Sciences had been disappointed by his ab- sence. Even more significant, royal permission and approbation of the dedication to Franklin of a scholarly book had been re- voked. This suppressed dedication is one of the most interesting and concrete records of the symbolic role that Franklin played in the diplomatic negotiations of The genius which char- acterized him is rediscovered in your works.

Like him you announce the greatest truths with this modest tone which so well agrees with the true sage, and there is such a great analogy between Palissy's method and that which you have used for the discovery of phe- nomena of natural philosophy that I could not associate two names more worthy of the admiration of savants. But the French philos- opher, devoted entirely to the seeking of the secrets of nature, did not penetrate at all into those of politics, a science which the sages of antiquity cultivated as one of the most important of philosophy.

You have realized its great value, Monsieur. Your works have for their purpose only the happiness of a free and virtuous people. Every nation which is concerned with the wisdom of its govern- ment has doubtless owed much to its first law-maker, but what does it not owe to those whose enlightenment and courage tend only to give a form more perfect and more stable to its laws. The people is fitted, said Montesquieu, "to choose those to whom it must confide a part of its authority; it makes its decisions only by things it is aware of and by facts which come under its ob- servation.

By the end of the year news of Burgoyne's defeat had given America a new prestige in France, and Franklin was now free to make public appearances. The English spy observed, Decem- ber 29, , that Franklin had been given a tumultuous ovation both at the public meeting of the Academy of Sciences Novem- ber 12 and at the opera. Franklin had been applauded by the grave and serious at the Academy and by the gallant and frivolous at the opera. But the surest indication of the success of his nego- tiations, the spy assumed, was his casting off the reserve that he formerly exhibited in regard to his country's affairs.

Since these writers by and large repeated the same generalities, there is little value in attempting to summarize their accounts. One of the best, by Charles Mayo, will serve as illustration. In a comparison between the United States and the federations of Switzerland and Holland published in , Mayo describes the enthusiastic reception ac- corded to Franklin. He was not given the title Monsieur; he was addressed simply Doctor Franklin, as one would have addressed Plato or Socrates. His genealogy was traced an attempt was made to claim him for France. What is most certain is that he was like Curtius, the off- spring of his virtues.

He must have considered it a happiness to be born in a country where a genius for law-making could be dis- played, where probity, temperance, frugality were qualities esteemed and observed. Free in his thoughts, observations, writings and speech, he had given to his character this energy which makes sci- ence useful for oneself and profitable to others. He began by ob- serving nature; this sky which is not so elevated that it is to be considered beyond the man of genius; he had explained the causes of the aurora borealis and subsequently he demonstrated the secrets of electricity.

If it is true that Prometheus was only a man, may one not believe that he was a natural philosopher like Franklin, who, like him, drew a line to the fire of heaven, but whose dis- covery has not been attended to. If he was not the first; if he had collaborators in the formation of the United States, A footnote referring to genealogical studies explains that an at- tempt had been made to trace Franklin's ancestors to a family from Pontoise.

This is probably based on a report in the Gazette of Amiens, April, , that the name Franklin had French rather than English origins, that the name Franquelin is very common in Picardy, and that the Doctor's ancestors probably went to England with the fleet of Jean de Biencourt. Even in the period before Burgoyne's defeat, any kind of publicity for Franklin was good publicity for the American cause. Franklin made arrangements with the printer and wrote to Vergennes ask- ing him to use his influence with the Keeper of the Seals to ob- tain permission for its prompt appearance.

On at least one occasion Franklin sponsored a propaganda piece in the Journal de Paris, edited by his friend Cadet de Vaux. The abb Jean Louis Soulavie's Historical and Political Mem- oirs of the Reign of Lewis XVI is the source of all that is known of this piece allegedly concerted by Franklin and Soulavie, but there is no reason to doubt the truth of his narrative.

Theories of naturalists had variously maintained that the sea re- tires, that it diminishes and loses its level, and that the mass of its water rises and increases. But even though it be fictitious, it provides a unique portrait of Franklin as a political theorist. According to Soulavie, Franklin in August, , pointed out to him an article in Le Courrier de I'Europe, dated August grd, in which Soulavie's Histoire naturelle de la France meridionale had been favorably mentioned.

The writer had called for ex- planation of Soulavie's affirmation that the protestants of the Gvennes district in southern France had been in a rebellious state for two centuries and "had listened to the natural enemies of France, and, assisted by them, had endeavoured to establish a republic in the very center of the nation, defended by inac- cessible rocks, and the loftiest mountains.

But the perfected continent will in its turn correct the other.

Monarchies, by way of restoration, be- come republics, republics sink into monarchies; and the author of the Courrier de I'Europe, as curious as myself, and my tea party, desires to learn from you, who is the natural enemy you mention of the French monarchy, that wished to raise a protestant republic in the heart of your southern mountains. Franklin thereupon suggested to Soulavie that he write the history of this movement and submit it to Louis XVI and Vergennes, who would certainly approve it.

Soulavie ob- jected that Franklin, as a protestant, even though a professed friend of France, must inevitably "approve the desire England has shown of dismembering France, for the benefit of liberty. I certainly love liberty, and esteem a republican government; but a republican minister, though de- voted to his country, may know how to forget his own predilection in favour of a friendly monarchy. Therefore, considering this at- tempt of the English as equally rash and criminal, I shall thankfully receive your papers; and if you will give me a letter to M. Soulavie agreed to compose a letter, but dissented from Frank- lin's opinion that the English scheme was rash or unpolitic.

He argued that the religious protestants present no threat to internal security because the government leaves them alone, but protes- tants of another kind, "the ignorant class of the lower people, who are burdened with imposts, and the more enlightened, who are malcontents" these constitute a real danger. The party that desires, and the party that dreads, a new order of things, agree in this, that France will one day suffer a greater revo- lution than that which America has experienced.

I speak of the clergy, who said officially to Lewis XV, before his death, that a revolution was preparing in the state, similar to the English one of ; and I refer to the philosophers, who long for a revolution, and are preparing one against religion. These remarks forecasting the French Revolution were not, we must remember, written until after the event and thus may re- flect the prescience of a retrospective view. According to Soulavie, Franklin not only did not foresee the Revolution, but repudiated Soulavie's forebodings: France is in a state strongly constituted, and, I doubt not, will long resist the spirit of innovation that overturns government.

I therefore think, that neither you or I shall live to see the changes you speak of, and for this reason, that the continent is equally old in all its parts, and France the youngest and most robust of all its states. At the same time it must be owned, that the protestants are no friends to a government, at the head of which is the body who treated them so ill; but they would hardly expose their frail existence to the danger of a sedition. They possess no longer that characteristic turbulence by which they were marked prior to the reign of Lewis XIV, who polished all degrees of the French: The time is come when history can record the faults of both parties; and, in my opin- ion, a narrative of the attempts made by England to raise a revolt among the French protestants under Lewis XIV, would be a point of history truly interesting.

Under the urging of Franklin, Soulavie prepared a letter set- ting forth the discoveries of his historical research, which Frank- lin passed on to Vergennes. In his letter Soulavie showed that from until the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Eng- lish had continually acted in France to fix a spot noted for protes- tant worship as "the central point of an independent republic, to be divided into provinces, and to have cities, and a capital, at the expense of the rest of the kingdom.

He stated to Franklin, neverthe- less, "I shall execute my task the more willingly, as, in opposition to the republican and political commotions aimed at by England, you agree with me as to the propriety of pointing out at the same time the moral remedies to be attempted by a wise and prudent government to the miseries of the revolution and anarchy, of which the clergy and the philosophers so eternally warn us. After indicating an intention of preparing a History of the Establish- ment and Progress of Protestantism in France and Europe, he sug- gests that his primary aim will be to solve the political problem.

When a portion of a great monarchy has, for many ages, experi- enced intestine commotion and religious wars, and the rebellion raised in the state has opposed the monarch, what are the means, most conformable to humanity, which reason and experience dic- tate, for the restoration of public tranquillity? Soulavie remarked that this article planned by himself and Frank- lin had appeared in the Journal de Paris exactly as submitted ex- cept that some additional political remedies against anarchy were rejected by the editors on the grounds that since the state of the nation had never been more tranquil or more remote from revo- lution, the remedies against anarchy were out of place.

Since these remedies seem to show the hand of Franklin they are worth re- printing. This may be done by directing their minds To a species of learning that has no connexion with any thing seditious, nor with polemical writings and factions, which are the pests of a state. To a system of general commerce.

To the study of the fine arts. To great undertakings, such as national buildings.

Image of 'balloon'

To the ridicule of past violences and errors, political or religious but this with the utmost caution. To pleasure, festivals, amusements, fashions, dances, and luxury. And lastly, By softening the manners of the turbulent; taking every means of gaining the surviving leaders, and especially the means of nego- tiation.

Of these remedies, Soulavie asserted that Franklin agreed that to divert men's minds, was the only way, after great events of allay- ing the seditious spirit of a people. He said, that the societies established in Europe were already too much softened. California's collapsing economy has caused the budget deficit to balloon. Doctors want a ban on its use in party balloons. Her next target is going up in a hot air balloon. How hot must air in a hot air balloon be to lift an elephant? It's not really about flying balloons. Just this wonderful fantasy of grabbing on to toy balloons and floating into open space.

The cost of most large projects balloons. The cuts follow a sustained period of ballooning military budgets. The fans let thousands of balloons go at the same time and it was an enchanting sea of colour. The laughing gas balloons are sold in clubs and bars for around 3. When the balloon goes up you will lose out. Yesterday his club claimed he was just blowing up a balloon.

Translate your text for free. Nearby words of 'balloon'. Related Terms of 'balloon'. Translation of balloon from the Collins English to French Dictionary. What is the imperative? An imperative is a form of the verb used when giving orders and instructions, for example, Shut the door!

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