“Sir,

        I fear you are becoming so much engrossed with the political conditions of the world as to forget the social. I should like to bring you back, as of yore, to the social, and to elicit your opinion upon many important points – one thing – what are we Americans in future to do in Paris? Or are we to go there at all except to deliver lectures on Self government and republicanism, and what is to become of Louis Philippe, the young Dukes and Duchesses? Will he again in his own words, return to the “Bundling System”? On the occasion of your own presentation to him a year ago, when he seemed quite persuaded he had met you before? His Majesty remarked to a young Tennessean standing near you of whom he was making particular enquiries about the present condition of his state – ‘Ah changed, greatly changed since my time’, sketching then graphically his route and privations. ‘In my time” continued the king ‘we walked on foot in Tennessee, were glad to bite a [hoecake?] in a log cabin and slept three in a bed, we followed the bundling system and how will it be with their Highnesses the Dukes De Nemours, D’Aumale and Montpensiers?’ – on that presentation occasion notwithstanding the marked civility of the King and Queen and all the Duchesses to the American gentleman, those young worthies [?] by D’Nemours passed the whole American line without even the civil nod and the same thing occurred two years before and now by the laws of their own land they are as flat down democrats as any log cabin man in Tennessee. Again I would ask what are we Americans, especially we of the ‘Upper Ten’ to do in Paris? Hitherto, the grand idea of there consorting with Royalty and Nobility has been inducement enough for many of us to brave the seas and sea sickness and even  to open splendid Hotels in the Faubourg St. Germain. A late letter in your paper makes mention of such a one fitted up in splendid style then and there existing, and describes a grand ball just given by the beautiful hostess, so beautiful you will remember as to have been the belle at last winters Court Ball at the Tuileries. Your correspondent speaks of Counts and Dukes and Duchessses by scores gracing the lady’s Salons and is it do that in all time to come La Belle Paris is only to be the abode of dirty democrats? Do give us you opinion.”

            Apparently written with tongue in cheek to the most famous American journalist and newspaper publisher of his day, a month after the revolution that forced the abdication of French King Louis Philippe.  A year earlier, while spending the winter and spring of 1847 in Paris, Bennett had been presented at the royal Court, an event he remembered sourly because he had been charged 30 francs to rent a court dress, sword and chapeau – a military uniform required because he supposedly held the rank of "Major-General in the Mormon Army." The account of that occasion in this letter does not appear in any of the standard biographical notes on Bennett, and makes one wonder if the anonymous writer was actually present at the scene - possibly a young diplomat at the American embassy, which was then without an envoy, newly-appointed Minister Richard Rush not arriving in Paris until July when the revolution that inspired Karl Marx was in full swing.  So, the King’s alleged colorful recollections of his American travels as an exile at the end of the 18^th century may not have been pure invention.