Three weeks later Jefferson dug in his files to send Madison more ammunition, showing clearly that, at least in one case, Washington himself had recognized formerly the authority of the legislature, that is to say both branches of the House, when it came to ratifying the treaty with the new Emperor of Morocco.[332] Then he wrote to his former neighbor, Philip Mazzei, a letter which was to cause him more difficulties than any of the previous acts of his career. He thought that he could and should give news of the country to this curious character, who had come to Virginia as a vine-grower to engage in agricultural experiments but who was also the former agent of the Duke of Tuscany and of Stanislas of Poland, a Grimm "_au petit pied_", a literary correspondent and a philosopher. In all fairness to Jefferson a preliminary remark is here necessary. He was apt in conversation to take his cue from his interlocutors rather than to force on them any topic, and he was apt also to speak in the same tone and same diapason. In his letters he instinctively yielded to the same tendency, changing his tone and style according to his correspondent. Writing to an Italian he adopted a flowery, metaphoric, and emphatic manner not often found in his letters, and in his desire to flatter the Tuscan ear of his friend, he overshot the mark and overemphasized what he would have stated much more moderately to an American: Against us are the Executive, the Judiciary, two out of three branches of the Legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, all timed men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.... It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England.... But these men had not realized the great strength of the party then coming into being: "We have only to awake and snap the Lilliputian cords with which they have been entangling us during the first sleep which succeeded our labors." Then came the customary mention of his health, even more mournful than usual: "I begin to feel the effects of age. My health has suddenly broken down, with symptoms which give me to believe that I shall not have much to encounter of the _tedium vitae_."[333] Little did he believe when he indulged in this rhetorical outburst that Mazzei would give the letter to an Italian paper, that it would be translated from the Italian into French, from French into English and finally appear in America.