The arrangements with the Comte de Rouault had been made at JA's request by Thomas Barclay, who had formerly rented the house; see JA-Barclay correspondence, 23 April–9 Aug. 1784 (Adams Papers). The reader is again referred to the detailed and colorful letters of AA describing the Hôtel de Rouault and the Adamses' life there during the following eight months, a selection of which appears in Howard C. Rice Jr., The Adams Family in Auteuil, 1784–1785, Boston, 1956, and more of which will be included in Series II of the present edition. The journal kept by AA2 at Auteuil from Aug. 1784 through May 1785 is also valuable despite its rather girlish concentration on the guests present at social affairs given or attended by the family; see AA2 Jour. and Corr. , 1:14–78. This portion of her journal contains numerous glimpses of Jefferson, Franklin, the Binghams, David Humphreys, William Short, the Lafayettes, Mme. Helvétius, and the Adamses' friends among the corps diplomatique, as well as sometimes entertaining and illuminating passages on Paris fashionable life and amusements, religious ceremonies, balloon ascensions, and the like. If the MS were available, the entries for this period would have been printed here to help fill in a long gap in JA's Diary, but as edited by AA2's daughter, Caroline Amelia (Smith) de Windt, in 1841, the text is far from dependable: there are obvious mistakes in transcription, names are given as blanks and initials, and editorial cuts have probably been made.