But when all is told, it does not appear that the circle of Jefferson's friends was ever very large. During his first year in Paris he did his best to keep in the background. To Franklin he owed deference, because of his age and the position of the Doctor as the only accredited representative to the Court of Versailles. Adams, the other plenipotentiary, was older than Jefferson, who on every occasion insisted that his colleagues should have precedence over him. A good listener, he was much more reserved than Franklin and always remained somewhat self-conscious when he spoke or wrote French. If the Doctor spoke French as badly as he wrote it, his conversation must have been an extraordinary jargon; but Jefferson was too sensitive and had too much _amour-propre_ to venture upon long discussions and conversations with people he did not know intimately. Most of his French letters were written by Short, who became rapidly a master of the language, and we may presume that Jefferson never really felt at home in a purely French circle. This was true at least of his first year in Paris. He had many fits of despondency and wondered at times whether he was not too old to accustom himself to strange people and to strange manners. He often experienced the usual longing of the traveler for his native land: "I am now of an age which does not easily accommodate itself to new modes of living and new manners," he wrote to Baron Geismer, the former prisoner of Charlottesville; "and I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds and independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital. I shall therefore, rejoin myself to my native country with new attachments and exaggerated esteem for its advantages."[108] It was probably on these occasions that he took refuge in the most silent of all places, a Carthusian monastery, a very strange abode for one who has been accused of being a fierce anti-clerical: He also had rooms in the Carthusian Monastery on Mount Calvary; the boarders, of whom I think there were forty, carried their own servants, and took their breakfasts in their own rooms. They assembled to dinner only. They had the privilege of walking in the gardens, but as it was a hermitage, it was against the rules of the house for any voices to be heard outside of their own rooms, hence the most profound silence. The author of "Anarcharsis" was a boarder at the time, and many others who had reasons for a temporary retirement from the world. Whenever he had a press of business, he was in the habit of taking his papers and going to the hermitage, where he spent sometimes a week or more till he had finished his work. The hermits visited him occasionally in Paris, and the Superior made him a present of an ivory broom that was turned by one of the brothers.[109] From time to time this same mood recurred: