There is yet another circumstance which should be mentioned, in order to exhibit the identity of sympathies in these two eminent persons. Each sought to marry Madame Helvetius: Turgot early in life, while she was still Mademoiselle Ligniville, belonging to a family of twenty-one children, from a chateau in Lorraine, and the niece of Madame de Graffigny, the author of the "Peruvian Letters"; Franklin in his old age, while a welcome guest in the intellectual circle which this widowed lady continued to gather about her. Throughout his stay in France he was in unbroken relations with this circle, dining with it very often, and adding much to its gayety, while Madame Helvetius, with her friends, dined with him once a week. It was with tears in his eyes that he parted from her, whom he never expected to see again in this life; and on reaching his American home, he addressed her in words of touching tenderness:--"I stretch out my arms towards you, notwithstanding the immensity of the seas which separate us, while I wait the heavenly kiss which I firmly trust one day to give you."[36] But the story of the verse is not yet finished. And here it mingles with the history of Franklin in Paris, constituting in itself an episode of the American Revolution. The verse was written for a portrait. And now that the ice was broken, the portrait of Franklin was to be seen everywhere,--in painting, in sculpture, and in engraving. I have counted, in the superb collection of the Bibliotheque Imperiale at Paris, nearly a hundred engraved heads of him. At the royal exposition of pictures the republican portrait found a place, and the name of Franklin was printed at length in the catalogue,--a circumstance which did not pass unobserved at the time; for the "Espion Anglais," in recording it, treats it as "announcing that he began to come out from his obscurity."[37] The same curious authority, describing a festival at Marseilles, says, under date of March 20th, 1779,--"I was struck, on entering the hall, to observe a crowd of portraits representing the insurgents; but that of M. Franklin especially drew my attention, on account of the device, '_Eripuit coelo_,' etc. This was inscribed recently, and _every one admired the sublime truth_."[38] Thus completely was France, not merely in its social centre, where fashion gives the law, but in its distant borders, pledged to the cause of which Franklin was the representative.