To Benjamin Franklin from Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, [23 December 1783?]
From Jean-Baptiste Le Roy
AL: American Philosophical Society
Tuesday morning [December 23, 1783?]6
My Dear Doctor give me leave to Send you these two petitions The One for The Woman That I talked to you of and who cries night and Day for a Son who She thinks is dead now, having had no news from him These Seven years.7 The other is for an Officer who fought in America for your good cause and who is the brother-in Law of The young M. Cassini. Accept my Dear Doctor of my best compliments be So good to Send me The Volue of the Encyclope in which there is the B.
6. The second of the two petitions enclosed in the present letter (both of which are missing) was on behalf of the vicomte de Mory, the brother-in-law of Cassini fils, and most likely concerned his desire to enter the Society of the Cincinnati; see Cassini fils to BF, Jan. 2, 1784, enclosing a similar if not identical petition. We speculate that the present letter preceded Cassini’s and induced BF to send Mory the medal that Cassini acknowledges on Jan. 2. We therefore assign the present letter to the first Tuesday following the French court’s acceptance of the Society of the Cincinnati (for which see the headnotes to Bariatinskii to BF, Dec. 22, 1783, and BF to SB, Jan. 26, 1784).
7. For a similar appeal from a desperate mother see XL, 20.