My dear Papa--I was very sorry to see, by your letter to Mr. Short, that your return would be put off. However, I hope not much, as you must be here for the arrival of my sister. I wish I was myself all that you tell me to make her; however, I will try to be as near like it as I can. I have another landscape since I wrote to you last, and have begun another piece of music. I have not been able to do more, having been confined some time to my bed with a violent headache and a pain in my side, which afterwards blistered up and made me suffer a great deal, but I am now much better. I have seen a physician who had just drawn two of my companions out of a most dreadful situation, which gave me a great deal of trust in him. But the most disagreeable thing is, that I have been obliged to discontinue all my masters, and am able now to take only some of them that are the least fatiguing. However, I hope to take them all very soon. Madame L'Abbesse has just had a _fluxion de poitrine_, and has been at the last extremity, but now is better. The _pays bas_ have revolted against the Emperor, who is gone to Prussia to join with the Empress and the Venetians to war against the Turks. The plague is in Spain. A Virginia ship coming to Spain met with a corsair of the same strength. They fought, and the battle lasted an hour and a quarter. The Americans gained and boarded the corsair, where they found chains that had been prepared for them. They took them, and made use of them for the Algerians themselves. They returned to Virginia, from whence they are to go back to Algiers to change the prisoners, to which, if the Algerians will not consent, the poor creatures will be sold as slaves. Good God! have we not enough? I wish with all my soul that the poor negroes were all freed.... A coach-and-six, well shut up, was seen to go to the Bastile, and the Baron de Breteuil went two hours before to prepare an apartment. They suppose it to be Madame de Polignac and her sister; however, no one knows. The King asked M. D'Harcourt how much a year was necessary for the Dauphin. M. D'Harcourt having looked over the accounts, told him two millions; upon which the King could not help expressing his astonishment, because each of his daughters cost him more; so Madame de Polignac had pocketed the rest. Mr. Smith is at Paris. That is all the news I know; they told me a great deal more, but I have forgotten it. Adieu, my dear papa, and believe me to be for life your most tender and affectionate child, M. JEFFERSON. Paris, May 3d, 1787. _Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson._ Marseilles, May 5th, 1787.