A friend of Hamilton's, writing about the same time, speaks in different terms, as follows: He has a good person, a fine ruddy complexion, quite active, and seems always in a bustle, more like a busy man than a man of business.

A Frenchman in his manners, he announces himself in all companies as the Minister of the Republic, etc., talks freely of his commission, and, like most Europeans, seems to have adopted mistaken notions of the penetration and knowledge of the people of the United States.

His system, I think, is to laugh us into war if he can.[1] [Footnote 1: Irving, V, 151.] Citizen Genet did not allow his progress up the coast to be so rapid that he was deprived of any ovation.

The banquets, luncheons, speech-makings, by which he was welcomed everywhere, had had no parallel in the country up to that time.

They seemed to be too carefully prepared to be unpremeditated, and probably many of those who took part in them did not understand that they were cheering for a cause which they had never espoused.