Jefferson was quite sincere when he declared: "I have no ambition to govern men; no passion which would lead me to delight to ride in a storm." In advance, he repeated the _suave mari magno_ of the old poet and hoped that he would not be elected, his only wish was that the newspapers would permit him "to plant his corn, beans, peas, etc. in hills or drills as he pleased, while our eastern friend will be struggling with the storm which is gathering over us, perhaps be shipwrecked in it! This is certainly not a moment to covet the helm." If this was not a sincere and true statement, then language certainly has been given to man to conceal his thought. If Jefferson was thirsty for power at that time he was more Machiavellian than Machiavelli himself. But in spite of the inferences of ill-intentioned historians, I do not see that there is the slightest ground to doubt Jefferson's sincerity ... except that he accepted finally the vice presidency, as he clearly hinted he would if it were offered to him.[337] He ended with a picturesque and energetic phrase and said in French what he could not say in English. He had not forgotten the words he had heard in the streets of Paris and perhaps in some salons after dinner, but certainly not in the mouth of Madame de Tessé or Madame de Corny: "_Au diable les bougres!_" The next day he started writing to John Adams: he had not received any direct news of the election, but from his own calculations he had every reason to believe that barring a "trick worthy of your arch-friend of New York, Hamilton", Adams would be elected. In that eventuality he wished to send his best wishes, and had only one hope to express, that Adams would be able to avoid the war. A friendly, sincere letter which Adams never saw. As Jefferson was going to send it, came Madison's letter of the seventeenth, announcing the complete results of the election. It caused a certain amount of surprise to Jefferson; the vote had come much nearer an equality than he had expected, and, as he wrote a week later to Volney, "the difference between sixty-eight and seventy-one votes is little sensible." The presidency would have been decidedly distasteful to him; the vice presidency was something different and he could not in his own mind decide whether he "had rather have it or not have it." Then he went into a curious piece of philosophizing which marks him as very different from eighteenth-century philosophers and eighteenth-century optimists. More of a realist in politics than he is given credit for, he showed himself once more a disciple of Hobbes in his vision of society: