QUOTE : Now it was winter. He hated the damp of Paris. “Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe!” Jefferson wrote in 1785.48 “I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire’s observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil.” As much as Jefferson loved France, residence abroad gave him a greater appreciation for his own nation. “My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy,” Jefferson wrote Monroe.49 “I confess I had no idea of it myself.