It was a long story that Mr. Jefferson had to tell him--a story with
many minute details touching the delicate relations between France and
America, with many explanations of the events which had just taken place
in Paris and the provinces, with many forecastings of events shortly to
take place in the kingdom of Louis XVI. Perhaps it was in the
forecasting of those events so soon to take place, of those acts of the
multitude, as yet undreamed of by the very doers of them, that Mr.
Jefferson most deeply impressed his listener. For there was no attribute
of Mr. Jefferson's mind so keen, so unerring, so forceful as that
peculiar power of divining the drift of the masses. It was this power
which later made him so greatly feared and greatly respected in his own
land. Forewarned and forearmed, he had but to range himself at the head
of multitudes, whose will he knew almost before they were aware of it
themselves, or else to stand aside, and, unscathed, let it pass him by
in all its turbulence and strength. But though he could foresee the
trend of events, his judgment was not infallible as to their values and
consequences.
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