United States or Belgium ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This great man set his face sternly against the project; but such was the enthusiasm of the people artfully stirred by Genet, who was as accomplished as he was unscrupulous, that a French party was formed.
Genet himself complained that he was thrown over by Jefferson after receiving from him every encouragement. This is, of course, true, but not in the least discreditable to Jefferson. When Genet arrived in Philadelphia, he was, although he had already committed some illegal acts in Charleston, profuse in his promises of good behavior.
As Hamilton took his seat this morning, however, the blood was in his head, and he and Jefferson exchanged a glance of sullen hate which made Washington extend his long arms at once. All went well until the President, with a premonitory sigh, introduced the dynamic name, Genet. Hamilton forgot his debility, and was all mind, alert and energetic.
Marshall," said I, "Citizen Genet has been liberal with nothing except commissions, and they have neither money nor men." "The rascals have all left town," said Mr. Marshall. "Citizen Quartermaster Depeau, their local financier, has gone back to his store at Knob Licks. The Sieur de St. Gre and a Mr. Temple, as doubtless you know, have gone to New Orleans.
In that spirit of conciliation which adopts the least irritating means for effecting its objects, Washington had resolved to bear with the insults, the resistance, and the open defiance of Genet until his appeal to the friendship and the policy of the French republic should be fairly tried.
The legless terror fell to the ground and streaked for its hole, and the following leopard only just managed to bound out of its way as it did so. Then, leaping light as thistle-down, coughing harshly, the leopard went up the tree after the male genet, and appeared to have cut him off from life and liberty for ever.
Added to all this, the Citizen Genet had, in the early part of the year 1793, arrived in America. As the representative of the French Republic he was armed with numerous blank commissions for privateers, to be delivered "to such French and American owners as should apply for the same." An attack was to be launched on British commerce.
In the morning, however, they were all gone, but the footmarks of the Genet cats told how they had been removed. Some squeaks the next day in the chimney betrayed the presence of some very young ones, and a fire of damp grass being lighted, their destruction was completed by suffocation.
In the wild they phrase it another way: "Kill or be killed." Man puts it more politely, perhaps, but it's all the same old natural law, I guess. The head and snaky neck developed a long, creamy, tawny-spotted body, and the body a long, banded, tapering tail all set on legs so short, they scarcely kept the owner off the ground; and the name of that beast was genet.
Genet, and an ample justification of its measures, this able diplomatic performance adds assurances of unvarying attachment to France, expressed in such terms of unaffected sensibility, as to render it impossible to suspect the sincerity of the concluding sentiment "that, after independence and self-government, there was nothing America more sincerely wished than perpetual friendship with them."
Word Of The Day