The next three months were spent in preparing for the journey. He made arrangements for his children and wrote a very touching letter to Washington, evincing once more that reluctance to express affectionate feeling so often found in Americans, a result of early education and training as much as of the national temperament: "Were I to indulge myself in those warm effusions which this subject forever prompts, they would wear an appearance of adulation very foreign to my nature; for such is the prostitution of language, that sincerity has no longer distinct terms in which to express her own truths."[91]
The ship that was to carry him to France was caught in the ice at the entrance of the Chesapeake, with no prospect of sailing before the beginning of March. When news came early in February that the negotiations were making satisfactory progress, he felt some doubts about the desirability of a voyage which entailed so much expense, and placed the matter in the hands of Congress. It was not until April 1, however, that he was informed that the object of his appointment was "so far advanced as to render [it] unnecessary for him to pursue his voyage." He left for Virginia a few days afterwards. For the third time his plans for visiting Europe had been thwarted, but he does not seem to have resented it so deeply as previously.
The wounds inflicted to his _amour-propre_ by the Virginia Assembly were healing. He had renewed his contact with public affairs, and when, on June 6, he was chosen as delegate to Congress, with Samuel Hardy, John F. Mercer, Arthur Lee, and James Monroe, he accepted without hesitation. The two years which were to elapse between June, 1782, and July 5, 1784, the date of his final departure from France on the _Ceres_, are not the most eventful or the most picturesque of Jefferson's career. In many respects, however, they are the fullest and the most important for a true understanding of his mind and character. In the absence of Franklin and Adams he stood out in Congress, head and shoulders above his colleagues; he was placed on most of the important committees, he completed his acquaintance with the internal and foreign policies of the United States, he reported on measures of vital importance and crystallized his opinion on fundamental problems.