If there were any doubt upon its authorship, it would be removed by the positive statement of Condorcet, who, in his Life of Turgot, written shortly after the death of this great man, says: “There is known from Turgot but one Latin verse, designed for the portrait of Franklin”; and he gives the verse in this form:-- “Eripuit cœlo fulmen, mox sceptra tyrannis.”[228] But Sparks and Mignet,[229] and so also both the biographical dictionaries of France,--that of Michaud and that of Didot,--while ascribing it to Turgot, concur in the form already quoted from Turgot’s Works, which was likewise adopted by Ginguené, the scholar who has done so much to illustrate Italian literature, on the title-page of his “Science du Bon-Homme Richard,” with an abridged Life of Franklin, in 1794, and by Cabanis, who lived in such intimacy with Franklin.[230] It cannot be doubted that this was the final form the verse assumed,--as it is unquestionably the best. * * * * * This verse was no common event. It was a new expression of the French alliance, and an assurance of independence. After its appearance and general adoption, there was no retreat for France. To appreciate its importance in marking and helping a great epoch, certain dates must be borne in mind. Franklin reached Paris on his mission towards the close of 1776. He had already signed the Declaration of Independence, and his present duty was to obtain the recognition of France for the new power. The very clever Madame du Deffand, in her amusing correspondence with Horace Walpole, describes him in a visit to her “with a fur cap on his head and spectacles on his nose,” in the same small circle with Madame de Luxembourg, a great lady of the time, the Abbé Barthélemy, and the Duc de Choiseul, late Prime-Minister. This was on the 31st of December, 1776.[231] A pretty good beginning. More than a year of effort and anxiety ensued, brightened at last by the Burgoyne surrender at Saratoga. On the 6th of February, 1778, the work of the American Plenipotentiary was crowned by the signature of the two Treaties of Alliance and Commerce, by which France acknowledged our independence and pledged her belligerent support. On the 13th of March, one of these treaties, with a diplomatic note announcing that the Colonies were free and independent States, was communicated to the British Government, at London, which promptly encountered it by a declaration of war. On the 20th of March, Franklin was received by the King at Versailles, and this remarkable scene is described by the same feminine pen to which we are indebted for the early glimpse of him on his arrival in Paris.[232] But throughout this intervening period he had not lived unknown. Indeed, he had become at once a celebrity. Lacretelle, the eminent French historian, says: “By the effect which Franklin produced in France he might have been said to have fulfilled his mission, not to a court, but to a free people.…