From Benjamin Franklin to “Prince” Mostowski, 3 February 1778
To “Prince” Mostowski2
AL (draft): American Philosophical Society
Passy, Feb. 3. 78
M. Franklin sera chez lui Jeudi prochain vers midi, quand il recevra avec beaucoup de Plaisir l’Honneur du Vis.3
M. Franklin will be at home on Thursday at Noon, ready to wait on Prince Mostowski, if he should then do him the Honour of calling on him as proposed.
2. Paul Michael (Pawel Michal) Mostowski (1721–81) was a self-styled prince. In Poland he had been constantly in trouble, as palatine first of Pomerania and then of Mazovia and as a leader of the Confederation of Bar; by 1774 his intrigue against King Stanislaus Augustus had driven him into exile. He was now, calling himself prince, established near Paris at La Villette, which was a rallying point for émigré confederates of Bar. Polski Slownick Biograficzny (Polska Akademia Nauk Instytut Historri; Warsaw, etc., 1977), an article kindly translated for us by Professor Piotr Wandycz; Jean Fabre, Stanislaus-Auguste Poniatowski et l’Europe des Lumières (Paris, 1952), p. 425.
3. BF must have begun to write “Visite”; he was perhaps defeated by its gender and reverted to English.