Jefferson could hardly have been leading a more complicated life. His work was urgent, his life in Parisian intellectual and social circles busy and dizzying. He was trying to raise his two daughters. He feared for his young, vulnerable republic, and he had been engaged in a flirtation with a married woman, slipping in and out of hired carriages in the shaded suburbs of Paris and strolling through the romantic forests of the city. From Versailles to the city’s theaters and opera, he was living vibrantly and fretting constantly. Any hour could bring devastating news about America—about her
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