Monseigneur The despatch with which you honoured us on the 22nd. has reached us by the ordinary post-courier today. We learnt on Tuesday of the adventure of the Dickenson through a bulletin of news from London which one of our friends sent us from Paris. The next day we received from Bristol copy of the letter which the captain had for us, and the Bristol Gazette, which has been copied successively by all the other newspapers. We judge that it is the captain who sent us the whole. We had not been informed of this consignment. We had, Monseigneur, three or four years ago, relations with those merchants of Philadelphia, and with others of that country, at the time when scarcity was causing anxiety in France, and we received from them flour and rice, which were of great help against the scarcity.

We have, Monseigneur, no knowledge of the two Frenchmen who are said to have gone to English America. 2 If any vessel comes into our ports from that country, we will do our utmost, with due circumspection, to learn the details of this affair, or romance, and shall have the honour of communicating them to you. If the affair is true, we think that these travellers may have come from St. Domingo, because there are frequent connections between those two countries, to the great prejudice of the French commerce. These travellers must have endeavoured to give themselves importance, or perhaps the Continental Congress may have thought it advantageous to its interests to announce them as important, in order to excite the people more and more to persist in the plan which has been adopted.

We are grateful for, Monseigneur, as well as honoured by, the justice which you deign to do us. We never allow ourselves to undertake any operation which might not be in keeping with the beneficent views of the pastoral and paternal Government under which we have the happiness to live, and in cases which might appear to be susceptible of different interpre tations, we should not fail, in order to decide them, to apply to the wise depositaries of the authority of our divine Monarch.

Allow us, Monseigneur, to take advantage of this opportunity to render to your knowledge and to your virtues the homage due to them, and which our heart has long since rendered you.

We are, with most profound respect, Monseigneur, [&c.] Montaudouin Brothers. Nantes 27 April, 1776