{"id":"01KG8AKHKYT76REPZD8ZAMYJZ9","cid":"bafkreifi5vx57ugsbns74fv5zrybeqke4n4um3iixte37nv4dwhmq3zxn4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":2058,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.590Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","start_line":1998,"text":"CHAPTER VIII.\r\nWHICH HAS SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT DR. FRANKLIN AND THE LATIN QUARTER.\r\n\r\n\r\nThe first, both in point of time and merit, of American envoys was\r\nfamous not less for the pastoral simplicity of his manners than for the\r\npolitic grace of his mind. Viewed from a certain point, there was a\r\ntouch of primeval orientalness in Benjamin Franklin. Neither is there\r\nwanting something like his Scriptural parallel. The history of the\r\npatriarch Jacob is interesting not less from the unselfish devotion\r\nwhich we are bound to ascribe to him, than from the deep worldly wisdom\r\nand polished Italian tact, gleaming under an air of Arcadian\r\nunaffectedness. The diplomatist and the shepherd are blended; a union\r\nnot without warrant; the apostolic serpent and dove. A tanned\r\nMachiavelli in tents.\r\n\r\nDoubtless, too, notwithstanding his eminence as lord of the moving\r\nmanor, Jacob’s raiment was of homespun; the economic envoy’s plain coat\r\nand hose, who has not heard of?\r\n\r\nFranklin all over is of a piece. He dressed his person as his periods;\r\nneat, trim, nothing superfluous, nothing deficient. In some of his\r\nworks his style is only surpassed by the unimprovable sentences of\r\nHobbes of Malmsbury, the paragon of perspicuity. The mental habits of\r\nHobbes and Franklin in several points, especially in one of some\r\nmoment, assimilated. Indeed, making due allowance for soil and era,\r\nhistory presents few trios more akin, upon the whole, than Jacob,\r\nHobbes, and Franklin; three labyrinth-minded, but plain-spoken\r\nBroadbrims, at once politicians and philosophers; keen observers of the\r\nmain chance; prudent courtiers; practical magians in linsey-woolsey.\r\n\r\nIn keeping with his general habitudes, Doctor Franklin while at the\r\nFrench Court did not reside in the aristocratical faubourgs. He deemed\r\nhis worsted hose and scientific tastes more adapted in a domestic way\r\nto the other side of the Seine, where the Latin Quarter, at once the\r\nhaunt of erudition and economy, seemed peculiarly to invite the\r\nphilosophical Poor Richard to its venerable retreats. Here, of gray,\r\nchilly, drizzly November mornings, in the dark-stoned quadrangle of the\r\ntime-honored Sorbonne, walked the lean and slippered\r\nmetaphysician,—oblivious for the moment that his sublime thoughts and\r\ntattered wardrobe were famous throughout Europe,—meditating on the\r\ntheme of his next lecture; at the same time, in the well-worn chambers\r\noverhead, some clayey-visaged chemist in ragged robe-de-chambre, and\r\nwith a soiled green flap over his left eye, was hard at work stooping\r\nover retorts and crucibles, discovering new antipathies in acids, again\r\nrisking strange explosions similar to that whereby he had already lost\r\nthe use of one optic; while in the lofty lodging-houses of the\r\nneighboring streets, indigent young students from all parts of France,\r\nwere ironing their shabby cocked hats, or inking the whity seams of\r\ntheir small-clothes, prior to a promenade with their pink-ribboned\r\nlittle grisettes in the Garden of the Luxembourg.\r\n\r\nLong ago the haunt of rank, the Latin Quarter still retains many old\r\nbuildings whose imposing architecture singularly contrasts with the\r\nunassuming habits of their present occupants. In some parts its general\r\nair is dreary and dim; monastic and theurgic. In those lonely narrow\r\nways—long-drawn prospectives of desertion—lined with huge piles of\r\nsilent, vaulted, old iron-grated buildings of dark gray stone, one\r\nalmost expects to encounter Paracelsus or Friar Bacon turning the next\r\ncorner, with some awful vial of Black-Art elixir in his hand.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJ1ZGSM27E73B2NAYBXX","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKHKYZ7WWWGRPY6JGRWPM","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:07.806Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:14.309Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}