attended to, and Benjamin Franklin actually could not extort from an indifferent Congress the small satisfaction of having his accounts passed. The consequence was that when he died the United States appeared his debtor, and never extricated itself from that painful position.[104] It was only in this matter that he ever showed the slightest anxiety concerning his reputation with posterity. He wanted to leave the name of an honest man; but otherwise he never was at the trouble of preparing a line to justify any of his actions, therein differing from many of his contemporaries. [Note 103: One of the most painful letters to read which our annals contain is that written by Franklin to Charles Thomson, secretary of Congress, November 29, 1788, _Works_, viii. 26, 30. It is an arraignment which humiliates the descendants of the members of that body.] [Note 104: Parton's _Life of Franklin_, ii. 596.] France showed a livelier affection and warmer appreciation toward the great dead than did his own countrymen. At the opening of the National Assembly, June 11, 1790, Mirabeau delivered an impassioned eulogy in the rhetorical French fashion; and the motion to wear mourning for three days was carried by acclamation. The president of that body, M. Sieyes, was instructed to communicate the resolution to Washington. At the celebration of the municipality of Paris the citizens generally wore a mourning badge; and the grain market, where the oration was delivered, was draped in black. The Academy of Sciences of course did formal honor to his memory, as did likewise the revolutionary clubs. A street at what was in his day Passy, but is now included in Paris, near the Trocadero, perpetuates by his name the admiration which France felt for him.