We Have In The
Memoires Of Brissot An Allusion To His Entrance Into This Society,
Under The Wing Of His Elderly Protectress:
-
"Proud of possessing an American savage, she wished to form him, and
to launch him in society. He had the good sense to refuse and to
confine himself to the picked society of men of letters."
It was at a later period that Brissot and Crevecoeur were to meet;
their quarrel, naturally, came later still.
Madame d'Houdetot did more than entertain the Farmer, whose father
had been one of her oldest friends. She secured his nomination as
Consul-General to the United States, now recognised by France; it
was at New York that he took up residence. Through the influence of
Madame d'Houdetot and her friends, he retained the appointment
through the stormy years that followed, though in the end he was
obliged to make way for a successor more in sympathy with the
violent republicanism of the age. Throughout the years of the French
Revolution, the ex-farmer lived a life of retirement, and, if never
of conspicuous danger, of embarrassment enough, and of humiliation.
We need not discuss those years spent at Paris; or the visits paid,
after the close of the Revolution, to his son-in-law and daughter,
for his daughter Frances-America was married to a French Secretary
of Legation, who became a Count of the Empire. Now he was in Paris
or the suburbs; now in London, or Munich. Five years of the Farmer's
later life were spent at the Bavarian capital; Maximilian
entertained him there, and told him that he had read his book with
the keenest pleasure and great profit too.
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