not exaggerate when he wrote to him,--"You will carry with you the
affection of all France"; and De Chastellux told the simple truth in
the graceful compliment he sent to the old sage after his return
home,--"When you were here, we had no need to praise the Americans; we
had only to say, 'Look! here is their representative.'" Let us devoutly
pray that our ambassadors may not be made use of for the same purpose
now!

For these reasons, Paine's reception in Paris was cordial; visits and
invitations poured in upon him; he dined with Malesherbes; M. Le Roy
took him to Buffon's, where he saw some interesting experiments on
inflammable air; the Abbe Morellet exerted himself to get the model of
his bridge, which had been stopped at the custom-house, safely to
Paris. Through their influence it was submitted to a committee of the
Academie des Sciences; their report was, in substance, that the iron
bridge of M. Paine was _ingenieusement imagine_,--that it merited an
attempt to execute it, and furnished a new example of the application
of a metal which had not yet been sufficiently used on a large scale.

Two other gentlemen from America, who were interested in science and in
mechanics, were in Paris at that time. Rumsey was there with his model
of a steamboat; and Thomas Jefferson, whose curiosity extended to all
things visible or audible, was busily collecting ground-plans and
elevations, and preparing to add at least two ugly buildings to a State
"over which," as he himself wrote, "the Genius of Architecture had
showered his malediction."

Unfortunately for inventors, the times were not favorable for the
construction of boats or of bridges. A taste had sprung up in France
for constitution-making, one of the most difficult and expensive of