From Benjamin Franklin to Philip Mazzei, [11] March 1783
To Philip Mazzei
Transcript:4 American Philosophical Society
March [11],5 1783
According to Mr Mazzei’s Request, Dr. Franklin has the honour to inform him that there is no Court at Versailles on Tuesday next, consequently that he shall not be there.—6
Dr. Franklin desires the honour of Mr & Mrs Mazzei’s7 Company at Dinner on Wednesday the 12th Inst.—at ½ pst 2
4. Made in 1952 from a private collection in Geneva.
5. Mazzei wrote in his autobiography that this note invited him to dine the following day: Philip Mazzei, My Life and Wanderings, trans. S. Eugene Scalia, ed. Margherita Marchione (Morristown, N.J., 1980), p. 271.
6. BF had agreed to present Mazzei at court. When he did so the following Tuesday, he was surprised to learn that Mazzei had already been introduced to Vergennes: Mazzei, My Life and Wanderings, pp. 270–1, 305.
7. Marie Hautefeuille Martin Mazzei had already left Paris: Mazzei, My Life and Wanderings, pp. 19, 410, 429.