It was not until December 4, 1777, that there broke a great and sudden rift in the solid cloudiness. First there came a vague rumor of good news, no one at all knew what; then a post-chaise drove into Dr. Franklin's courtyard, and from it hastily alighted the young messenger, Jonathan Loring Austin, whom Congress had sent express from Philadelphia, and who had accomplished an extraordinarily rapid journey. The American group of envoys and agents were all there, gathered by the mysterious report which had reached them, and at the sound of the wheels they ran out into the courtyard and eagerly surrounded the chaise. "Sir," exclaimed Franklin, "is Philadelphia taken?" "Yes, sir," replied Austin; and Franklin clasped his hands and turned to reenter the house. But Austin cried that he bore greater news: that General Burgoyne and his whole army were prisoners of war! At the words the glorious sunshine burst forth. Beaumarchais, the ecstatic, sprang into his carriage and drove madly for the city to spread the story; but he upset his vehicle and dislocated his arm. The envoys hastily read and wrote; in a few hours Austin was again on the road, this time bound to de Vergennes at Versailles, to tell the great tidings. Soon all Paris got the news and burst into triumphant rejoicing over the disaster to England. Austin's next errand was a secret and singular one. Franklin managed throughout his residence in France to maintain a constant communication with the opposition party in England. He now thought it wise to enable them to obtain full information from an intelligent man who was not many weeks absent from the States. Accordingly he dispatched Austin, using extreme precautions of secrecy, making him "burn every letter which he had brought from his friends in America," but giving him in exchange two other letters, which certainly introduced him to strange society for an American "rebel" to frequent. During his visit he was "domesticated in the family of the Earl of Shelburne; placed under the particular protection of his chaplain, the celebrated Dr. Priestley; introduced" to George IV., then Prince of Wales, with whom was Charles Fox, and was "present at all the coteries of the opposition." Almost every evening he was invited to dinner-parties, at which the company was chiefly composed of members of Parliament, and they plied him with interrogations about his country and its affairs, so that, as he reported, "no question which you can conceive is omitted."[49] He answered well, and rendered service as good as it was singular, for which Franklin was probably the only American who could have furnished the opening. The adventure brings to mind some of the Jacobite tales of Sir Walter Scott's novels. [Note 49: Parton's _Life of Franklin_, ii. 307.]