On the occasion of Merry’s reception, the President’s chief offence in etiquette consisted in the slippers without heels. No law of the United States or treaty stipulation forbade Jefferson to receive Merry in heelless slippers, or for that matter in bare feet, if he thought proper to do so. Yet Virginia gentlemen did not intentionally mortify their guests; and perhaps Madison would have done better to relieve the President of such a suspicion by notifying Merry beforehand that he would not be expected to wear full dress. In that case the British minister might have complimented Jefferson by himself appearing in slippers without heels. A card of invitation was next sent, asking Mr. and Mrs. Merry to dine at the White House, December 2. Such an invitation was in diplomatic usage equivalent to a command, and Merry at once accepted it. The new minister was then told that he must call on the heads of departments. He remonstrated, saying that Liston, his predecessor, had been required to make the first visit only to the Secretary of State; but he was told, in effect, that what had been done under the last Administration was no rule for the present one. Merry acquiesced, and made his calls. These pin-thrusts irritated him; but he was more seriously inconvenienced by the sudden withdrawal of diplomatic privileges by the Senate, although Vice-President Burr took occasion to explain that the Senate’s action was quite unconnected with the President’s “canons of etiquette,” and was in truth due to some indiscretion of Yrujo in the House of Representatives. Meanwhile the President took an unusual step. When two countries were at war, neutral governments commonly refrained from inviting the representative of one belligerent to meet the representative of the other, unless on formal occasions where the entire diplomatic body was invited, or in crowds where contact was not necessary. Still more rarely were such incongruous guests invited to an entertainment supposed to be given in honor of either individual. No one knew this rule better than Jefferson, who had been himself four years in diplomatic service at Paris, besides being three years Secretary of State to President Washington at Philadelphia. He knew that the last person whom Merry would care to meet was Pichon, the French _chargé_; yet he not only invited Pichon, but pressed him to attend. The Frenchman, aware that Merry was to be mortified by the etiquette of the dinner, and watching with delight the process by which Jefferson, day after day, took a higher tone toward England, wrote an account of the affair to Talleyrand.[266] He said:--