Calvert of Strathore | Page 5

provinces, with many forecastings of events
shortly to take place in the kingdom of Louis XVI. Perhaps it was in
the forecasting of those events so soon to take place, of those acts of the
multitude, as yet undreamed of by the very doers of them, that Mr.
Jefferson most deeply impressed his listener. For there was no attribute
of Mr. Jefferson's mind so keen, so unerring, so forceful as that peculiar
power of divining the drift of the masses. It was this power which later
made him so greatly feared and greatly respected in his own land.
Forewarned and forearmed, he had but to range himself at the head of
multitudes, whose will he knew almost before they were aware of it
themselves, or else to stand aside, and, unscathed, let it pass him by in
all its turbulence and strength. But though he could foresee the trend of
events, his judgment was not infallible as to their values and
consequences. Even as he spoke of the disquieting progress of affairs,
even as he predicted the yet more serious turn they were to take, his
countenance expressed a boundless, if somewhat vaguely defined,
belief and happiness in the future.
The glow of enthusiasm was not at all reflected in the keen, attentive
face of the younger man opposite him, whose look of growing

disquietude betrayed the fact that he did not share Mr. Jefferson's hopes
or sympathies. Indeed, it was inevitable that these two men of genius
should hold dissimilar views about the struggle which the one had so
clearly divined was to come and of which the other so clearly
comprehended the consequences. It was inevitable that the man who
had the sublime audacity to proclaim unfettered liberty and equality to
a new world should differ radically from the man whose supreme
achievement had been the fashioning and welding of its laws. They
talked together until the wintry sun suddenly suffered an eclipse behind
the mountains of gray clouds which had been threatening to fall upon it
all the afternoon, and only the light from the crackling logs remained to
show the bright enthusiasm of Mr. Jefferson's noble face and the
sombre shadow upon Mr. Morris's disturbed one.
CHAPTER II
THE FRANCE OF 1789
France was sick. A great change and fever had fallen upon her, and
there was no physician near skilled enough to cure her. Now and then
one of her sons would look upon the pale, wasted features and note the
rapidly throbbing pulse, the wild ravings of the disordered brain, and,
frightened and despondent, would hurry away to consult with his
brothers what should be done. But never to any good. Medicines were
tried which had been potent with others in like sickness, but they
seemed only to increase her delirium or lessen her vitality--never to
bring her strength and reason. Day by day she grew worse. 'Twas as if
some quick poison were working in her veins, until at last the poor
body was one mass of swollen disfigurements, of putrid sores, that only
a miracle from Heaven could heal. As miracles could not be looked for,
everyone who had any skill in such desperate cases was called, and a
thousand different opinions were given, a thousand different cures tried.
And when all was seen to have been in vain, her tortured children, in
their despair, left her and turned upon the false physicians, putting them
to death and with ferocious joy avenging her agonies. And in the quiet
which thus fell upon her, when all had left her to die, the fever and pain
vanished; from her opened veins the poisoned blood dropped away; to

the blinded eyes sight returned; in the distracted brain reason once more
held sway. Slowly and faintly she arose and went about her business.
It was of that fast-sickening France, of that blighted land of France, that
Mr. Jefferson spoke so earnestly in the gathering darkness of that
winter's day in the year 1789. The storm which had just swept over the
American colonies had passed, leaving wrecks strewn from shore to
shore, 'tis true, but a land fairer and greater than ever, a people tried by
adversity and made strong. The tempest, which had been so gallantly
withstood by our ably manned ship of state, had blown across the
Atlantic and was beating upon the unprotected shores of France. The
storm was gathering fast in that most famous year of 1789--the alpha
and omega of French history, the ending of all things old, the beginning
of all things new, for France. Two years before the bewildered
Assemblée des Notables had met and had been dismissed to spread
their agitation and disaffection throughout all France by the still more
bewildered Loménie de Brienne, who was trying his hand at