As we await the fate of the letter I took the liberty of addressing to your excellency on the 8th of December 1791,1 care of Captain Rose of the Maryland, sent from here to Georgetown and enclosing a copy of my latest letter to his excellency General Washington, president of the Congress of the United States, allow me the honor of making known to you the current sad state of your erstwhile secretary, the good old Father Dumas, agent of your States, though lacking any appointment avowed and recognized by Their High Mightinesses. Having delivered to him several packages on literary topics, care of your ingenious and industrious compatriot John Churchman Jr., I went to greet him at The Hague the day before yesterday, where I found him in a most afflicted state, suffering martyrdom of body and soul, his hypochondria reducing him to a skeletal figure, neglected and aggrieved by his family, surrounded by faithless people, from whom he knows not how to extricate himself in order to retire to some boardinghouse with a more humane family, less keen on fleecing him. Judging from his great physical and spiritual dejection, and by his haste to leave this world, I would believe his end to be quite near at hand.2

Your excellency will know better than I whether he possesses some public acts or documents that it would do well to secure? And, having renounced all work he is no longer fit to continue, whether the political and commercial interests of the United States do not necessitate, in the interim, the activity of some trustworthy man on the scene to relieve him, and carry on his duties, all necessary steps having first been taken, in the name of the executive power of the United States? fulfilling thereby to their satisfaction a very important role in the current state of affairs.

In this instance, as in every other, I pray you, sir, reiterate to his excellency the president the humble offering of my ardent and sincere zeal for the prosperity of your illustrious republic, by every service within the feeble powers, sir, of your most devoted servant