Immediately after setting foot in France, Franklin wrote to his _cher, bon ami_, the Doctor Dubourg, a letter full of warm expressions of friendship and of polite messages to Madame. He enclosed under the same cover a letter to Silas Deane, begging his dear friend to see to its speedy delivery. The letter to Deane informed him of his new appointment, and gave orders that Lee be summoned immediately to join them. He bore with him no letter from Congress, nor any message relating to the past services of Deane, news of which, in fact, had hardly reached the colonies at the time of the doctor’s embarkation. Franklin had no personal interest in the work already accomplished, since his _cher, bon ami_ had been set aside, as soon as Deane saw “where the confidence of the Government was placed.” From the first he had determined not to interfere in the quarrel that existed between Lee and Deane, and he steadily refused to enter into the merits of the zeal displayed by Beaumarchais under cover of Hortalès et Cie. Warned against him by so many of his friends, and having particular reasons for not showing marked favor to Deane (the suspicious jealousy of Lee’s character threatened from the start to thwart the entire object of the commission), he chose the course of ignoring all that already had been accomplished. For the moment Deane, himself, seemed alienated from Beaumarchais. Vexed at the delay in despatching the supplies (for he knew nothing of the counter-order issued by the Government), irritated by Lee, annoyed at the indifference of Franklin and dismayed by the silence of Congress, Deane in turn assumed an attitude of cold indifference which perplexed and disquieted his friend. The new duties which were forced upon him, the change in the character of his mission, occupied for the time all his thoughts. As soon as the three commissioners were united in Paris, Franklin wrote asking for an audience with the minister of foreign affairs, M. de Vergennes. “Sir,” he wrote, “we beg leave to acquaint your Excellency that we are appointed and fully empowered by the Congress of the United States of America to propose and negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce between France and the said states.... (Doniol II, 112.)” The minister, however, really anxious to further the plans of Beaumarchais, was slow to give additional umbrage to the English Ambassador by receiving the three commissioners whose presence in Paris it was impossible to hide.