The Museum at the Palais Royal seems to have proved a lucrative concern, and to have been devoted to the portraits of men and women of position, holding for the time being a prominent place in the public eye. Little is known concerning it, except for a few meagre and commonplace references in the literature of the period, and it may, to all intents and purposes, be considered as relegated to the domain of the forgotten past. We shall not, however, find ourselves able to dispose of the Exhibition on the Boulevard du Temple without rendering an account of it, for in the course of a few years it figured very largely in the Revolution, and had associated with it several incidents of an important and far-reaching character. There is the record about this time of an acquaintance between the sculptor and Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and philosopher. Franklin had come to Paris in December, 1776, “to transact the business of his country at the Court of France,” his chief purpose being to obtain political and financial assistance in consolidating the newly formed United States of America. Curtius and his niece--now a young woman of sixteen years--had the pleasure of entertaining the Doctor, who took considerable interest in their work. Not only did he commission them to execute several distinct portraits of himself, but he also ordered models of many other notable characters of the day. One of his own portraits is the identical figure which has been shown at Madame Tussaud’s ever since. [Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Modeled from life, in Paris, by Christopher Curtius for his Exhibition.] This model was executed in 1783, in which year Franklin assumed great prominence as one of the signatories to the Treaty of Peace between the Mother Country and the United States, which recognised the latter as an independent nation. The figure in question is a life-size one; but, in addition to this, Curtius, aided by his capable niece, who was now earnestly supporting her uncle in his work, produced several miniature portraits of the statesman which went directly into his possession. Indeed, it is well known that Franklin had in his rooms in Paris many works that had emanated from Curtius’s studio. In Franklin’s _Autobiography_ there is an account of his home in Market Street, Philadelphia, in which he finally settled, and the following extract under the date 13th July, 1787, from a journal kept by an old friend of his, the Reverend Dr. Manasseh Cutler, a distinguished scholar and botanist, of Hamilton, Massachusetts, who had recently paid him a visit, shows that he took with him from Paris a number of miniatures, many of which he had obtained from Curtius: Over his mantel he has a prodigious number of medals, busts and casts in wax or plaster of paris, which are the effigies of the most noted characters in Europe.