His virtues and renown negotiated for him.”[233] Condorcet, who was part of that intellectual society which welcomed the new Plenipotentiary, has left a record of his reception. “The celebrity of Franklin in the sciences,” he says, “gave him the friendship of all who love or cultivate them, that is, of all who exert a real and durable influence upon public opinion. At his arrival he became an object of veneration to all enlightened men, and of curiosity to others. He submitted to this curiosity with the natural facility of his character, and with the conviction that he thereby served the cause of his country. It was an honor to have seen him. People repeated what they had heard him say. Every _fête_ which he was willing to receive, every house where he consented to go, spread in society new admirers, _who became so many partisans of the American Revolution_.… Men whom the reading of philosophical books had secretly disposed to the love of Liberty became enthusiastic for that of a strange people.… A general cry was soon raised in favor of the American War, and the friends of peace dared not even complain that peace was sacrificed to the cause of Liberty.”[234] This is an animated picture by an eye-witness. But all authorities concur in its truthfulness. Even Capefigue, whose business is to belittle all that is truly great, and especially to efface the names associated with human liberty, while, like another Old Mortality, he furbishes the tombstones of royal mistresses, is yet constrained to attest the popularity and influence which Franklin achieved. The critic dwells on what he styles his “Quaker garb,” his “linen so white under his brown clothes,” and also the elaborate art of the philosopher, who understood France and knew well “that a popular man became soon more powerful than power itself”; but he cannot deny that the philosopher “fulfilled his duties with great superiority,” or that he became at once famous.[235] The rosewater biographer of Diane de Poitiers, Madame de Pompadour, and Madame du Barry would naturally disparage the representative of Science and Revolution.