Martha was soon introduced into society at the brilliant court of Louis the Sixteenth, and soon forgot her girlish desire to enter a convent. No word in allusion to the subject ever passed between the father and daughter, and it was not referred to by either of them until years afterwards, when she spoke of it to her children. Getting more and more impatient for leave to return home for a few months, we find Jefferson writing to Washington, in the spring of 1789, as follows: _To George Washington._ In a letter of November 19th to Mr. Jay, I asked a leave of absence to carry my children back to their own country, and to settle various matters of a private nature, which were left unsettled, because I had no idea of being absent so long. I expected that letter would have been received in time to be acted upon by the Government then existing. I know now that it would arrive when there was no Congress, and consequently that it must have awaited your arrival in New York. I hope you found the request not an unreasonable one. I am excessively anxious to receive the permission without delay, that I may be able to get back before the winter sets in. Nothing can be so dreadful to me as to be shivering at sea for two or three months in a winter passage. Besides, there has never been a moment at which the presence of a minister here could be so well dispensed with, from certainty of no war this summer, and that the Government will be so totally absorbed in domestic arrangements as to attend to nothing exterior. In the same letter we find him congratulating Washington on his election as President, and seizing that occasion to pay a graceful tribute to him of praise and admiration, and also of affection. He says: