" It may, if things should take a turn favorable to France," he wrote Madison, April 17, " defeat all we may do, even at the moment of signing You will recollect that I have been long preparing this government to yield us the country above the Arkansas, and I am therefore surprised that our commission should have entirely lost sight of the object." Livingston's fears proved groundless, and the dickering went on until April 29, when Marbois' original figures were accepted -- sixty million francs to France, and twenty million francs to Amer-

ROBERT R. LIVINGSTON. HI

ican claimants ; in all, fifteen million dollars. Three days later, on May 2, 1803, the treaty was signed. It is not surprising that Livingston felt proud and aappy. Other treaties of consequence had been negotiated by Americans -- the treaty of alliance with France, the treaty of peace with England, and Jay's treaty of 1795 ; but none was more important than Livingston's. Besides, it was unparalleled in the field of diplomacy, since Louisiana cost, comparatively, almost nothing. Perhaps Livingston's pride was only equalled by Jefferson's surprise. A mother is usually prepared for the coming of the baby that is to enlarge and illuminate her home. Its clothes are ready, the nursery is furnished, and everything is waiting its advent ; but President Jefferson was unprepared for the Louisiana Purchase. It was so entirely unsought on his part that he had given the subject no consideration until half an empire came tumbling upon him like a great meteor out of the midnight sky. At first, he thought he would cede a part of it to the Indians in exchange for their holdings on the east side of the Miseissippi, and " shut up all the rest from settlement for a long time to come." "I have indulged myself in these details," he writes James Dickinson, August 9, 1803, " because the subject being new it is advantageous to interchange ideas on it and to get our notions all corrected before we are obliged to act upon them." Then he raised the question of a constitutional amendment.