Chapter I: Warriors and Wild Beasts (8)

Long after she was grown Virginia, the younger daughter, remembered with pleasure those half-hours with old books. From her account of their prison life we learn that it was the rector of the university who enabled her mother to send and receive letters unknown to their jailers. "We owe him the deepest gratitude. By his means some public news reached our ears.... In the interior of the prison we had established a correspondence with our companions in captivity. Even before our arrival our father's secretary could speak to him through the window by means of a Pan's pipe for which he had arranged a cipher known to M. de Maubourg's servant. But this mode of correspondence, the only one in use for a long time, did not allow great intercourse. We obtained an easier one with the help of the soldiers whom we bribed by the pleasure of a good meal. Of a night, through our double bars, we used to lower at the end of a string a parcel with part of our supper to the sentry on duty under our windows, who would pass the packet in the same manner to Messrs. Maubourg and Pusy, who occupied separate parts of the prison."

[Pg 245]Though they could see no change from day to day, the prisoners were conscious, on looking back over several weeks or months, that they were being treated with greater consideration. After every vigorous expression in favor of Lafayette by Englishmen and Americans, especially after every military success gained by France, their jailers became a fraction more polite. When talk of peace between Austria and France began, Tourgot, the emperor's prime minister, preferred to have his master give up the prisoners of his own free will rather than under compulsion. In July, 1797, the Marquis de Chasteler, "a perfect gentleman, highly educated, and accomplished," came to Olmütz to inquire with much solicitude, on the emperor's behalf, how the prisoners had been treated, and to offer them freedom under certain conditions. One condition was that they should never set foot again on Austrian territory without special permission. Another stipulated that Lafayette should not even stay in Europe, but must sail forthwith for America. To this he replied that he did not wish to stay in Austria, even at the emperor's most earnest invitation, and that he had often declared his intention of emigrating to America; but that he did not propose to render account of his actions to Frederick William II or to make any promise which seemed to imply that that sovereign had any rights in the matter. Madame Lafayette and his two friends, Maubourg and Pusy, whom he saw for the first time in three years when they were brought to consult with him over this proposal, agreed fully with Lafayette's stand; and the result was that all of them stayed in prison.

[Pg 246]XXVI

EXILES

But hope grew. On the very day of Chasteler's visit the prisoners learned that negotiations for peace, already begun, contained a clause which would set them free. These negotiations were being directed in part--a very important part--by a remarkable man who had been only an unknown second lieutenant when the troubles began in France, but whose name was now on everybody's lips and whose power was rapidly approaching that of a dictator. The elder De Ségur, father of Lafayette's friend, had started him on his spectacular career by placing him in the military academy. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. A man even less sagacious than he would have seen the advantage of making friends rather than enemies of Lafayette's supporters in Europe and America.

Thus it was partly because of repeated demands for his release coming from England and France and America, and largely because Napoleon willed it, that Lafayette was finally set free. Also there is little doubt that Austria was heartily tired of being his jailer. Tourgot [Pg 247]said that Lafayette would have been released much earlier if anybody had known what on earth to do with him, but that neither Italy nor France would tolerate him within its borders. Tourgot supposed the emperor would raise no objection to the arrangement he had concluded to turn over "all that caravan" to America as a means of getting rid of him; "of which I shall be very glad," he added. The American consul at Hamburg was to receive the prisoners, and he promised that they should be gone in ten days. This time Lafayette was not given a chance to say Yes or No.

On September 18, 1797, five years and a month after he had been arrested, and two years lacking one month from the time Madame Lafayette and the girls joined him, the gates of Olmütz opened and he and his "caravan" went forth: Latour Maubourg, Bureaux de Pusy, the faithful Felix, and other humble members of their retinue who had shared imprisonment with them. Louis Romeuf, the aide-de-camp, who had taken down Lafayette's farewell words to France and who had been zealous in working for his relief, rode joyously to meet them, but so long as Austria had authority the military kept him at arm's-length. The party had one single glimpse of him, but it was not until they had reached Dresden that he was permitted to join them.

Gradually sun and wind lost their feeling of strangeness on prison-blanched cheeks. Gradually the crowds that gathered to watch them pass dared show more interest. Lafayette's face was not unknown to all who saw him. An Austrian pressed forward to thank him for saving [Pg 248]his life in Paris on a day when Lafayette had set his wits against the fury of the mob. When the party reached Hamburg Gouverneur Morris and his host, who was an imperial minister, left a dinner-party to go through the form of receiving the prisoners from their Austrian guard, thus "completing their liberty." The short time spent in Hamburg was devoted to writing letters of thanks to Huger, to Fitzpatrick, and the others who had worked for their release.

The one anxiety during this happy journey had been caused by the condition of Madame Lafayette, who showed, now that the strain was removed, how very much the prison months had cost her. She did her best to respond to the demands made upon her strength by the friendliness of the crowds; but it was evident that in her state of exhaustion a voyage to America was not to be thought of. From Hamburg, therefore, the Lafayettes went to the villa of Madame Tessé on the shores of Lake Ploën in Holstein. Here they remained several weeks in happy reunion with relatives and close friends; and it was here a few months later that Anastasie, Lafayette's elder daughter, was married to a younger brother of Latour de Maubourg, to the joy of every one, though to the mock consternation of the lively, white-haired Countess of Tessé, who declared that these young people, ruined by the Revolution, were setting up housekeeping in a state of poverty and innocence unequaled since the days of Adam and Eve.

The Lafayettes and the Maubourgs took together a large castle at [Pg 249]Lhemkulen, not far from Madame de Tessé, where Lafayette settled himself to wait until he should be allowed to return to France. It was here that George rejoined his family. He had been a child when his father saw him last; he returned a man, older than Lafayette had been when he set out for America. Washington had been very kind to him, but his years in America had not been happy. Probably he felt instinctively the constraint in regard to him.

Washington had been much distressed by Lafayette's misfortune and had taken every official step possible to secure his release. It was through the good offices of the American minister at London that Lafayette had learned that his wife and children still lived. Washington had sent Madame Lafayette not only sympathetic words, but a check for one thousand dollars, in the hope that it might relieve some of her pressing necessities. He even wrote the Austrian emperor a personal letter in Lafayette's behalf. When he heard that George was to be sent him he "desired to serve the father of this young man, and to become his best friend," but he did not find the godfatherly duty entirely easy. It threatened to conflict with his greater duty as father of his country, strange as it seems that kindness to one innocent, unhappy boy could have that effect. Washington was President of the United States at the time and it behooved the young nation to be very circumspect. Diplomacy is a strange game of many rules and pitfalls; and it might prove embarrassing and compromising to have as member of his family the son of a man who was looked upon by [Pg 250]most of the governments of Europe as an arch criminal.

Washington wrote to George in care of the Boston friend to whose house the youth would go on landing, advising him not to travel farther, but to enter Harvard and pursue his studies there. But M. Frestel also came to America, by another ship and under an assumed name, and George continued his education with him instead of entering college. He possessed little of his father's faculty for making friends, though the few who knew him esteemed him highly. The most impressionable years of his life had been passed amid tragic scenes, and his natural reserve and tendency to silence had been increased by anxiety about his father's fate. After a time he went to Mount Vernon and became part of the household there. One of Washington's visitors wrote: "I was particularly struck with the marks of affection which the general showed his pupil, his adopted son, son of the Marquis de Lafayette. Seated opposite to him, he looked at him with pleasure and listened to him with manifest interest." A note in Washington's business ledger shows that the great man was both generous and sympathetic in fulfilling his fatherly duties. It reads: "By Geo. W. Fayette, gave for the purpose of his getting himself such small articles of clothing as he might not choose to ask for, $100." It was at Mount Vernon that the news of his real father's release came to George. He rushed out into the fields away from everybody, to shout and cry and give vent to his emotion unseen by human eyes.

[Pg 251]His father was pleased by the development he noted in him; pleased by the letter Washington sent by the hand of "your son, who is highly deserving of such parents as you and your estimable lady." Pleased, too, that George had the manners to stop in Paris on the way home long enough to pay his respects to Napoleon, and that, in the absence of the general, he had been kindly received by Madame Bonaparte. Natural courtesy as well as policy demanded that the Lafayettes fully acknowledge their debt to Napoleon. One of Lafayette's first acts on being set free had been to write him the following joint letter of thanks with Maubourg and Pusy:

"CITIZEN GENERAL: The prisoners of Olmütz, happy in owing their
deliverance to the good will of their country and to your
irresistible arms, rejoiced during their captivity in the thought
that their liberty and their lives depended upon the triumphs of
the Republic and of your personal glory. It is with the utmost
satisfaction that we now do homage to our liberator. We should have
liked, Citizen General, to express these sentiments in person, to
look with our own eyes upon the scenes of so many victories, the army
which won them, and the general who has added our resurrection to the
number of his miracles. But you are aware that the journey to Hamburg
was not left to our choice. From the place where we parted with our
jailers we address our thanks to their victor.

"From our solitary retreat in the Danish territory of Holstein, where
[Pg 252] we shall endeavor to re-establish the health you have saved
to us, our patriotic prayers for the Republic will go out united with
the most lively interest in the illustrious general to whom we are
even more indebted for the services he has rendered liberty and our
country than for the special obligation it is our glory to owe him,
and which the deepest gratitude has engraved forever upon our hearts.

"Greetings and respect.

"LA FAYETTE,

LATOUR MAUBOURG,

BUREAUX DE PUSY."

Lafayette could no more leave politics alone than he could keep from breathing; and even in its stilted phrases of thanks this letter managed to show how much more he valued the Republic than any individual. Perhaps even at that early date he mistrusted Napoleon's personal ambition.

With the leisure of exile on his hands, and pens and paper once more within easy reach, he plunged into correspondence and into the project of writing a book with Maubourg and Pusy to set forth their views of government. Pens and paper seem to have been the greatest luxuries of his exile, for the family fortunes were at a low ebb. Two of Madame Lafayette's younger sisters joined her and the three pooled their ingenuity and their limited means to get the necessaries of life at the lowest possible cost. "The only resource of the mistress of the establishment was to make 'snow eggs' when she was called upon to [Pg 253]provide an extra dish for fifteen or sixteen persons all dying of hunger." This state of things continued after they had gone to live at Vianen near Utrecht in Holland, in order to be a little closer to France. Lafayette had asked permission of the Directory to return with the officers who had left France with him, but received no answer.

Since Madame Lafayette's name was not on the list of suspected persons, she could come and go as she would, and she made several journeys, when health permitted, to attend to business connected with the inheritance coming to her from her mother's estate. She was in Paris in November, 1799, when the Directory was overthrown and Napoleon became practically king of France for the term of ten years with the title of First Consul. She sent her husband a passport under an assumed name and bade him come at once without asking permission of any one and without any guaranty of personal safety beyond the general one that the new government promised justice to all. This was advice after his own heart and he suddenly appeared in Paris. Once there he wrote to Napoleon, announcing his arrival. Napoleon's ministers were scandalized and declared he must go back. Nobody had the courage to mention the subject to the First Consul, whose anger was already a matter of wholesome dread; but Madame Lafayette took the situation into her own hands. She went to see Napoleon as simply as if she were calling upon her lawyer, and just as if he were her lawyer she laid her husband's case before him. The calm and gentle effrontery filled him with delight. "Madame, [Pg 254]I am charmed to make your acquaintance!" he cried; "you are a woman of spirit--but you do not understand affairs."

However, it was agreed that Lafayette might remain in France, provided he retired to the country and kept very quiet while necessary formalities were complied with. In March, 1800, his name and those of the companions of his flight were removed from the lists of _émigrés_. After this visit of Madame Lafayette to the First Consul the family took up its residence about forty miles from Paris at La Grange near Rozoy, a château dating from the twelfth century, which had belonged to Madame d'Ayen. But it was not as the holder of feudal dwellings and traditions that Lafayette installed himself in the place that was to be his home for the rest of his life. He had willingly given up his title when the Assembly abolished such things in 1790. Mirabeau mockingly called him "Grandison Lafayette" for voting for such a measure. It was as an up-to-date farmer that he began life all over again at the age of forty-two. He made Felix Pontonnier his manager, and they worked literally from the ground up, for the estate had been neglected and there was little money to devote to it. Gradually he accumulated plants and animals and machines from all parts of the world; writing voluminous letters about flocks and fruit-trees, and exchanging much advice and many seeds; pursuing agriculture, he said, himself, "with all the ardor he had given in youth to other callings." A decade later he announced with pride that "with a little theory and ten years of experience he had succeeded fairly well."

[Pg 255]As soon as Napoleon's anger cooled he received Lafayette and Latour Maubourg, conversing affably, even jocularly about their imprisonment. "I don't know what the devil you did to the Austrians," he said, "but it cost them a mighty effort to let you go." For a time Lafayette saw the First Consul frequently and was on excellent terms with other members of his family. Lucien Bonaparte is said to have cherished the belief that Lafayette would not have objected to him as a son-in-law. But in character and principle Lafayette and the First Consul were too far apart to be really friends. It was to the interest of each to secure the good will of the other, and both appear honestly to have tried. The two have been said to typify the beginning and the end of the French Revolution: Lafayette, the generous, impractical theories of its first months: Napoleon, the strong will and strong hand needed to pull the country out of the anarchy into which these theories had degenerated. Lafayette was too much of an optimist and idealist not to speak his mind freely to the First Consul, even when asking favors for old friends. Napoleon was too practical not to resent lectures from a man whose theories had signally failed of success; and far too much of an autocrat to enjoy having his personal favors refused. The grand cross of the Legion of Honor, a seat in the French Senate at a time when it depended on the will of Napoleon and not on an election of the people, and the post of minister to the United States were refused in turn. Lafayette said he was more interested in agriculture than in [Pg 256]embassies, and made it plain that an office to which he was elected was the only kind he cared to hold. If Napoleon hoped to gain his support by appealing to his ambition, he failed utterly.

Gradually their relations became strained and the break occurred in 1802 when Napoleon was declared Consul for life. Lafayette was now an elector for the Department of Seine and Marne, an office within the gift of the people, and as such had to vote on the proposal to make Bonaparte Consul for life.

He cast his vote against it, inscribing on the register of his Commune: "I cannot vote for such a magistracy until public liberty is sufficiently guaranteed. Then I shall give my vote to Napoleon Bonaparte"; and he wrote him a letter carefully explaining that there was nothing personal in it. "That is quite true," says a French biographer. "A popular government, with Bonaparte at its head, would have suited Lafayette exactly."

Napoleon as emperor and autocrat suited him not at all. He continued to live in retirement, busy with his farm, his correspondence, and his family, or when his duties as Deputy took him to Paris, attending strictly to those and avoiding intercourse with Napoleon's ministers. He made visits to Chavaniac to gladden the heart of the old aunt who was once more mistress of the manor-house, and he rejoiced in George's marriage to a very charming girl. In February, 1803, while in Paris, a fall upon the ice resulted in an injury that made him lame for life. The surgeon experimented with a new method of treatment whose only [Pg 257]result was extreme torture even for Lafayette, whose power of bearing pain almost equaled that of his blood brothers, the American Indians. It was during this season of agony that Virginia, his youngest child, was married in a neighboring room to Louis de Lasteyrie, by the same priest who had followed the brave De Noailles women to the foot of the scaffold. Instead of the profusion of plate and jewels which would have been hers before the Revolution, the family "assessed itself" to present to the bride and her husband a portfolio containing two thousand francs--about four hundred dollars.

In 1807 the greatest grief of Lafayette's life came to him in the death of his wife, who had never recovered from the rigors of Olmütz. "It is not for having come to Olmütz that I wish to praise her here," the heartbroken husband wrote to Latour Maubourg soon after the Christmas Eve on which her gentle spirit passed to another life, "but that she did not come until she had taken the time to make every possible provision within her power to safeguard the welfare of my aunt and the rights of my creditors, and for having had the courage to send George to America." The gallant, loving lady was buried in the cemetery of Picpus, the secret place where the bodies of the victims to the Terror had been thrown. A poor working-girl had discovered the spot, and largely through the efforts of Madame Lafayette and her sister a chapel had been built and the cemetery put in order--which perhaps accounts for the simplicity of Virginia's wedding-gift.

[Pg 258]XXVII

A GRATEFUL REPUBLIC

During the long, dark night of Lafayette's imprisonment he had dreamed of America as the land of dawn and hope, and planned to make a new home there, but when release came this had not seemed best. Madame Lafayette's health had been too frail, and La Grange, with its neglected acres, was too obviously awaiting a master. "Besides, we lack the first dollar to buy a farm. That, in addition to many other considerations, should prevent your tormenting yourself about it," he told Adrienne. One of these considerations was the beloved old aunt at Chavaniac, who lived to the age of ninety-two and never ceased to be the object of his special care. Also his young people, with their marriages and budding families, were too dear to permit him willingly to put three thousand miles of ocean between them and himself.

But he had never lost touch with his adopted country. At the time he declined Napoleon's offer to make him minister to the United States he wrote a correspondent that he had by no means given up the hope of visiting it again as a private citizen; though, he added, humorously, [Pg 259]he fancied that if he landed in America in anything except a military uniform he would feel as embarrassed and as much out of place as a savage in knee-breeches. After Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States, foreseeing he could not profitably keep it, Jefferson sounded Lafayette about coming to be governor of the newly acquired territory. That offer, too, he had seen fit to refuse; but his friends called him "the American enthusiast."

Time went by until almost fifty years had passed since the "Bostonians" took their stand against the British king. To celebrate the semi-centennial, America decided to raise a monument to the heroes of Bunker Hill. Lafayette was asked to lay the corner-stone at the ceremonies which were to take place on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle. It became the pleasant duty of President James Monroe, who had served as a subaltern in the battle where Lafayette received his American wound, to send him the official invitation of Congress and to place a government frigate at his disposal for the trip. A turn of French elections in 1824 had left him temporarily "a statesman out of a job," without even the duty of representing his district in the Chamber of Deputies. There was really no reason why he should not accept and every reason why he might at last gratify his desire to see America and American friends again.

He sailed on July 12, 1824, not, however, upon the United States frigate, but on the _Cadmus_, a regular packet-boat, preferring, he said, to come as a private individual. His son accompanied him, as did [Pg 260]Col. A. Lavasseur, who acted as his secretary. These, with his faithful valet, Bastien, made up his entire retinue, though he might easily have had a regiment of followers, so many were the applications of enthusiastic young men who seemed to look upon this as some new sort of military expedition. On the _Cadmus_ he asked fellow-travelers about American hotels and the cost of travel by stage and steamboat, and M. Lavasseur made careful note of the answers. He had no idea of the reception that awaited him. When the _Cadmus_ sailed into New York harbor and he saw every boat gay with bunting and realized that every man, woman, and child to whom coming was possible had come out to meet him, he was completely overcome. "It will burst!" he cried, pressing his hands to his heart, while tears rolled down his cheeks.

Whether he wished or no, he found himself the nation's guest. The country not only stopped its work and its play to give him greeting; it stopped its politics--and beyond that Americans cannot go. It was a campaign summer, but men forgot for a time whether they were for Adams or Crawford, Clay or Jackson. Election Day was three months off, politics could wait; but nobody could wait to see this man who had come to them out of the past from the days of the Revolution, whose memory was their country's most glorious heritage. They gave him salutes and dinners and receptions. They elected him to all manner of societies. Mills and factories closed and the employees surged forth to shout [Pg 261]themselves hoarse as they jostled mayors and judges in the welcome. Dignified professors found themselves battling in a crowd of their own students to get near his carriage. Our whole hard-headed, practical nation burst into what it fondly believed to be poetry in honor of his coming. Even the inmates of New York's Debtors' Prison sent forth such an effusion of many stanzas. If these were not real poems, the authors never suspected it. There was truth in them, at any rate. "Again the hero comes to tread the sacred soil for which he bled" was the theme upon which they endlessly embroidered. Occasionally the law sidestepped in his honor. A deputy sheriff in New England pinned upon his door this remarkable "Notice. Arrests in civil suits postponed to-day, sacred to Freedom and Freedom's Friend."

Lafayette arrived in August and remained until September of the following year, and during that time managed, to tread an astonishing amount of our sacred soil, considering that he came before the day of railroads. The country he had helped to create had tripled in population, and, instead of being merely a narrow strip along the Atlantic, now stretched westward a thousand miles. He visited all the states and all the principal towns. It was not only in towns that he was welcomed. At the loneliest crossroads a musket-shot or a bugle-call brought people magically together. The sick were carried out on mattresses and wrung his hand and thanked God. Babies were named for him. One bore through life the whole name Welcome Lafayette. Miles of [Pg 262]babies already named were held up for him to see--and perhaps to kiss. Old soldiers stretched out hands almost as feeble as those of babies in efforts to detain him and fight their battles o'er. With these he was very tender. Small boys drew "Lafayette fish" out of the brooks on summer days, and when he came to their neighborhood ran untold distances to get sight of him. Often he helped them to points of vantage from which they could see something more than forests of grown-up backs and legs during the ceremonies which took place before court-houses and state-houses. Here little girls, very much washed and curled, presented him with useless bouquets and lisped those artless odes of welcome. Sometimes they tried to crown him with laurel, a calamity he averted with a deft hand. Back of the little girls usually stood a phalanx of larger maidens in white, carrying banners, who were supposed to represent the states of the Union; and back of the maidens was sometimes a wonderful triumphal arch built of scantling and covered with painted muslin, the first achievement of its kind in local history.

The country was really deeply moved by Lafayette's visit. It meant to honor him to the full, but it saw no reason to hide the fact that it had done something for him as well. "The Nation's Guest. France gave him birth; America gave him Immortality," was a statement that kept everybody, nations and individuals alike, in their proper places. In short, the welcome America gave Lafayette was hearty and sincere. Whether it appeared as brilliant to the guest of honor, accustomed from [Pg 263]youth to pageants at Versailles, as it did to his hosts we may doubt. It was occasionally hard for M. Lavasseur to appear impressed and not frankly astonished at the things he saw. Lafayette enjoyed it all thoroughly. The difficult rôle fell to his son George, who had neither the interest of novelty nor of personal triumph to sustain him. He already knew American ways, and it was equally impossible for him to join in the ovation or to acknowledge greetings not meant for himself. He made himself useful by taking possession of the countless invitations showered upon his father and arranging an itinerary to embrace as many of them as possible.

From a painting by William Birch]

After a miniature in the possession of the family]

To those who have been wont to think of this American triumphal progress of Lafayette's as steady and slow, stopping only for demonstrations of welcome and rarely if ever doubling on its tracks, it is a relief to learn that Lafayette did occasionally rest. He made Washington, the capital of the country, his headquarters, and set out from there on longer or shorter journeys. The town had not existed, indeed had scarcely been dreamed of, for a decade after his first visit. What he thought of the straggling place, with its muddy, stump-infested avenues, we shall never know. He had abundant imagination--which was one reason the town existed; for without imagination he would never have crossed the ocean to fight for American liberty. Among the people he saw about him in Washington during the official ceremonies were many old friends and many younger faces mysteriously like them. To that striking sentence in Henry Clay's [Pg 264]address of welcome in the House of Representatives, "General, you find yourself here in the midst of posterity," he could answer, with truth and gallantry, "No, Mr. Speaker, posterity has not yet begun for me, for I find in these sons of my old friends the same political ideals and, I may add, the same warm sentiments toward myself that I have already had the happiness to enjoy in their fathers."

His great friend Washington had gone to his rest; but there were memories of Washington at every turn. He made a visit to Mount Vernon and spent a long hour at his friend's tomb. He entered Yorktown following Washington's old campaign tent, a relic which was carried ahead of the Lafayette processions in that part of the country, in a spirit almost as reverent as that the Hebrews felt toward the Ark of the Covenant. At Yorktown the ceremonies were held near the Rock Redoubt which Lafayette's command had so gallantly taken. Zachary Taylor, who was to gain fame as a general himself and to be President of the United States, presented a laurel wreath, which Lafayette turned from a compliment to himself to a tribute to his men. "You know, sir," he said, "that in this business of storming redoubts with unloaded arms and fixed bayonets, the merit of the deed lies in the soldiers who execute it," and he accepted the crown "in the name of the light infantry--those we have lost as well as those who survive."

Farther south, at Camden, he laid the corner-stone of a monument to his friend De Kalb; and at Savannah performed the same labor of love for [Pg 265]one erected in honor of Nathanael Greene and of Pulaski. At Charleston, also, he met Achille Marat, come from his home in Florida to talk with Lafayette about his father, who met his death at the hands of Charlotte Corday during the French Revolution. There were many meetings in America to remind him of his life abroad. Francis Huger joined him for a large part of his journey; he saw Dubois Martin, now a jaunty old gentleman of eighty-three. It was he who had bought _La Victoire_ for Lafayette's runaway journey. In New Jersey he dined with Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, who was living there quietly with his daughter and son-in-law.

Both on the Western frontier and at the nation's capital he met Indian chiefs with garments more brilliant and manners quite as dignified as kings ever possessed. In a time of freshet in the West he became the guest of an Indian named Big Warrior and spent the night in his savage home. On another night he came near accepting unwillingly the hospitality of the Ohio River, for the steamboat upon which he was traveling caught fire, after the manner of river boats of that era, and "burned a hole in the night" and disappeared. He lost many of his belongings in consequence, including his hat, but not his serenity or even a fraction of his health, though the accident occurred in the pouring rain.

Everywhere, particularly in the West, he came to towns and counties bearing his own name. In the East he revisited with his son spots made memorable in the Revolution. On the Hudson he rose early to point out [Pg 266]to George the place where André had been taken and the house to which he and Washington had come so soon after Arnold's precipitate flight. At West Point he reviewed the cadets, slim and straight and young, while General Scott and General Brown, both tall, handsome men, looking very smart indeed in their plumes and dress uniforms, stood beside their visitor, who was almost as tall and military in his bearing and quite as noticeable for the neatness and plainness of his civilian dress.

Lafayette was broader of shoulder and distinctly heavier than he had been forty years before. Even in his youth he had not been handsome, though he possessed for Americans the magnetism his son so sadly lacked. His once fair complexion had turned brown and his once reddish hair had turned gray, but that was a secret concealed under a chestnut wig. He carried a cane and walked with a slight limp, which Americans attributed enthusiastically to his wound in their service, but which was really caused by that fall upon the ice in 1803. Despite his checkered fortunes his sixty-eight years had passed lightly over his head. Perhaps he did not altogether relish being addressed as Venerable Sir by mayors and town officials, any more than he liked to have laurel wreaths pulling his wig awry, but he knew that both were meant in exquisite politeness.

And, true Frenchman that he was, he never allowed himself to be outdone in politeness. Everywhere incidents occurred, trivial enough, but very charming in spirit, that have been treasured in memory and handed down to this day. In New London two rival congregations besought him to [Pg 267]come to their churches and listen to their pastors. He pleased them both. He led blind old ladies gallantly through the minuet. He held tiny girls in his arms and, kissing them, said they reminded him of his own little Virginia. He chatted delightfully with young men who accompanied him as governors' aides in turn through the different states; and if he extracted local information from these talks to use it again slyly, with telling effect, in reply to the very next address of welcome, that was a joke between themselves which they enjoyed hugely. "He spoke the English language well, but slower than a native American," one of these young aides tells us. He was seldom at a loss for a graceful speech, though this was a gift that came to him late in life. And his memory for faces seldom played him false. When William Magaw, who had been surgeon of the old First Pennsylvania, visited him and challenged him for recognition, Lafayette replied that he did not remember his name, but that he knew very well what he had done for him--he had dressed his wound after the battle of the Brandywine!

The processions and celebrations in Lafayette's honor culminated in the ceremony for which he had crossed the Atlantic, the laying of the corner-stone at Bunker Hill. Pious people had said hopefully that the Lord could not let it rain on such a day; and their faith was justified, for the weather was perfect. We are told that on the 17th of June "everything that had wheels and everything that had legs" moved in the direction of the monument. Accounts tell of endless organizations [Pg 268]and of "miles of spectators," until there seemed to be not room for another person to sit or stand. The same chaplain who had lifted up his young voice in prayer in the darkness on Cambridge Common before the men marched off to battle was there in the sunlight to raise his old hands in blessing. Daniel Webster, who had not been born when the battle was fought, was there to make the oration. He could move his hearers as no other American has been able to do, playing upon their emotions as upon an instrument, and never was his skill greater than upon that day. He set the key of feeling in the words, "Venerable men," addressed to the forty survivors of the battle, a gray-haired group, sitting together in the afternoon light. Lafayette had met this little company in a quiet room before the ceremonies began and had greeted each as if he were in truth a personal friend. After his part in the ceremony was over he elected to sit with them instead of in the place prepared for him. "I belong there," he said, and there he sat, his chestnut wig shining in the gray company.

While Webster's eloquence worked its spell, and pride and joy and pain even to the point of tears swept over the thousands of upturned faces as cloud shadows sweep across a meadow, Lafayette must have remembered another scene, a still greater assembly, even more tense with feeling, in which he had been a central figure: that fête of the Federation on the Champs de Mars. Surely no other man in history has been allowed to feel himself so intimately a part of two nations in their moments of patriotic exaltation.

[Pg 269]XXVIII

LEAVE-TAKINGS

Though the celebration at Bunker Hill was the crowning moment of Lafayette's stay in America, he remained three months longer, sailing home in September, 1825. The last weeks were spent in and near Washington. Here he had fitted so perfectly into the scheme of life that his comings and goings had ceased to cause remark, except as a pleasant detail of the daily routine. Perhaps this is the subtlest compliment Americans paid him. One of the mottoes in a hall decorated in his honor had read, "_Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de sa famille?_" "Where can a man feel more at home than in the bosom of his family?"--and this attitude of Washingtonians toward him showed how completely he had been adopted as one of themselves.

He had made himself one in thought and spirit with the most aggressively American of them all. A witty speech of his proves this. A bill had been introduced in Congress to present him with two hundred thousand dollars in money and "twenty-four thousand acres of fertile land in Florida" to right a wrong unintentionally done him years [Pg 270]before. He had been entitled at the time of our Revolution to the pay of an officer of his rank and to a grant of public land to be located wherever he chose. He refused to accept either until after the Revolution in France had swept away his fortune. Then his agent in the United States chose for him a tract of land near New Orleans which Jefferson thought would be of great value. Congress was not informed and granted this same land to the city. Lafayette had a prior claim, but flatly refused to contest the matter, saying he could have no quarrel with the American people. Everybody wanted the bill concerning this reparation in the way of money and Florida land to pass, and it was certain to go through, but there were twenty-six members of the House and Senate who, for one reason and another, felt constrained to vote against it. Some voted consistently and persistently against unusual appropriations of any kind; some argued that it was an insult to translate Lafayette's services into terms of cold cash. The struggle between private friendship and public duty was so hard that some of them came to make a personal explanation. "My dear friends!" he cried, grasping their hands, "I assure you it would have been different had I been a member of Congress. There would not have been twenty-six objectors--there would have been twenty-seven! " During this American visit he renewed old ties with, or made the acquaintance of, nine men who had been or were to become Presidents of the United States: John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, [Pg 271]William Henry Harrison, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, and Franklin Pierce. Perhaps there were others. He broke the rules of the Puritan Sabbath by driving out to dine on that day with the venerable John Adams at his home near Boston; but there was only one white horse to draw his carriage instead of the customary four, and not a hurrah broke the orderly quiet. Had it been a week-day the crowds would have shouted themselves hoarse. Jefferson, ill and feeble, welcomed him on the lawn at Monticello, the estate so dear to him which had been ravaged by the British about the time Lafayette began his part in driving Cornwallis to Yorktown.

As was quite fitting, Lafayette was the guest of President John Quincy Adams at the White House during the last days of his stay. One incident must be told, because it is so very American and so amusing from the foreign point of view. He expressed a desire to make a visit of farewell to his old friend James Monroe, who had been President the year before. He was now living on his estate of Oak Hill, thirty-seven miles away. President Adams offered to accompany him, and on an August day they set out by carriage after an early dinner. Mr. Adams, both Lafayettes, and a friend rode in the presidential carriage. Colonel Lavasseur and the son of the President followed in a "tilbury," a kind of uncovered gig fashionable then on both sides of the Atlantic. Servants and luggage brought up the rear.

Lafayette had been passed free over thousands of miles of toll-road [Pg 272]since he landed in the United States, but when they reached the bridge across the Potomac the little procession halted and Mr. Adams paid toll like an ordinary mortal. Scarcely had his carriage started again when a plaintive, "Mr. President! Mr. President!" brought it to a standstill. The gatekeeper came running up with a coin in his hand. "Mr. President," he panted, "you've done made a mistake. I reckon yo' thought this was two bits, but it's only a levy. You owe me another twelve and a half cents." The President listened, gravely examined the coin, counted the noses of men and horses, and agreed that he was at fault. He was just reaching down into the presidential pocket when he was arrested by a new exclamation. The gatekeeper had recognized Lafayette and was thoroughly crestfallen. "I reckon the joke's on me," he said, apologetically. "All the toll-roads has orders to pass the general free, so I owe you something instid of you owin' me money. I reckon I ought to pass you-all as the general's bodyguard." But to this Adams demurred. He was not anybody's bodyguard. He was President of the United States, and, though it was true that toll-roads passed the guest of the nation free, General Lafayette was riding that day in his private capacity, as a friend of Mr. Adams. There was no reason at all why the company should be cheated out of any of its toll. The gatekeeper considered this and acknowledged the superiority of Yankee logic. "That sounds fair," he admitted. "I reckon you-all do owe me twelve and a half cents." In the tilbury young Adams grinned and [Pg 273]Colonel Lavasseur chuckled his appreciation. "The one time General Lafayette does not pass free over your roads," he said, "is when he rides with the ruler of the country. In any other land he could not pay, for that very reason."

When the day of farewell came Washington streets were filled with men and women come out to see the last of the nation's guest. Stores and public buildings were closed and surrounding regions poured their crowds into the city. Everybody was sad. The cavalry escort which for a year had gathered at unholy hours to speed Lafayette on his way or to meet him on his return, whenever he could be persuaded to take it into his confidence, met for the last time on such pleasant duty, taking its station near the White House, where as many citizens as possible had congregated. The hour set for departure was early afternoon. Officials had begun to gather before eleven o'clock. At noon the President appeared and took his place with them in a circle of chairs in the large vestibule, whose outside doors had been opened wide to permit all who could see to witness the public leave-taking.

After a brief interval of silence an inner door opened and Lafayette came forward with the President's son and the marshal of the District. Mr. Adams rose and made a short address. Lafayette attempted to reply, but was overcome with feeling, and it was several moments before he regained control of his voice. At the end of his little speech he cried, "God bless you!" and opened his arms wide with a gesture that included everybody. Then the crowd pressed forward and surrounded him [Pg 274]until he retired to Mrs. Adams's sitting-room for the real farewell with the President's household. After that Mr. Adams and he appeared upon the portico. Lafayette stepped into a waiting carriage. Flags dipped, cannon boomed, and the procession took up its march to the wharf where a little steamer waited to carry the travelers down the Potomac to the new government frigate Brandywine, on which they were to sail. At the river's edge he reviewed the militia of the District of Columbia, standing with some relatives of Washington's during this final ceremony. It is said that a cheer that was like a cry of bereavement rose from the crowd and mingled with the last boom of the military salute as the boat swung out into the stream.

The sun had dropped below the horizon when they neared Mount Vernon. The company was at dinner, everybody, even George Lafayette, working hard to overcome the sadness that threatened to engulf the company. The marshal came and bent over Lafayette, who pushed back his plate and bowed his head upon his breast. Then he rose and hurried to the deck for a parting look, at the home of his friend most of the company following him. The eyes of both father and son sought out the stately house set on a hill, which held so many associations for both of them. The younger man had found the beautiful place less well cared for than during the lifetime of its owner. Lafayette had returned to it only to visit a tomb.

The trees near the mansion were already beginning to blur in the short [Pg 275]September twilight. Silently, with his head a little bent and a little turned to the right, as was his habit, he watched it as the boat slipped by. The afterglow behind the house had deepened to molten gold when a bend in the river blotted it from his sight. He turned like a man coming out of a dream and hurried to his cabin without a word.

"Only then," says Lavasseur, "did he fully realize the sacrifice made to France in leaving America."

[Pg 276]XXIX

PRESIDENT--OR KING-MAKER?

The ocean was no kinder than usual to Lafayette on his homeward voyage and the reception he met in Havre lacked enthusiasm. Louis XVIII, who was king when he went away, had died during his absence and another brother of the ill-fated Louis XVI had mounted the throne, with the title of Charles X. He was no other than the Comte d'Artois who had presided over Lafayette's section in the Assembly of Notables and had been blind to his presence when the two reached the same inn at the same moment in Austria. His ministers were no more friendly to liberals of Lafayette's way of thinking than those of his brothers had been; but the liberals of France showed a distinct desire to notice the home-coming of Lafayette. Police could and did disperse young men on horseback who gathered under his windows at the inn in Rouen for a serenade; but there were other ways of paying respect. One took the form of a contest of poets "to celebrate a voyage which history will place among the great events of the century." There were eighty-three [Pg 277]contestants, and Béranger, who had already paid his tribute, acted as a judge. In due time the victor was ceremoniously given a prize. Lafayette must have been reminded of the burst of rhyme in America quite as much by contrast as by similarity.

His children came to meet him, which more than compensated for official neglect; and the welcome of several hundred neighbors when he reached La Grange convinced him that his local popularity was not impaired. On the whole he had reason to be well content. He brought home ruddy health, knowledge of the love in which he was held by twelve million warm-hearted Americans, and, a lesser consideration, doubtless, but one for which to be properly grateful, the prospect of speedily rebuilding the family fortunes. The grant of land voted by Congress was for thirty-six sections of six hundred and forty acres each, "east of and adjoining the city of Tallahassee in Leon County, Florida." So far as the writer has been able to learn, it never greatly benefited him or his heirs; but that fact was mercifully hidden in the future. In addition to the land there was a goodly sum of money to his credit in a Philadelphia bank.

He had stood the fatigues of the trip wonderfully. His cousin who went to see him soon after his return marveled to find him "big, fat, fresh, and joyous," showing not the least ill effects from having "gone several months practically without sleep, in addition to talking, writing, traveling, and drinking for all he was worth (_pour tout de bon_) ten hours out of the twenty-four." And he brought home from [Pg 278]across the sea another gift: an ease in public speaking which astonished the friends who remembered the impatient scorn his silences roused in Marie Antoinette and how seldom he made speeches in the Assembly of Notables. During his command of the National Guard of Paris his utterances had of necessity been more frequent and more emphatic, but they betrayed none of the pleasure in addressing audiences that he now evidently felt. It was as though the friendliness of the American people had opened for him a new and delightful channel through which he could express his good will toward all the world. His voice lent itself well to public speaking; it could be soft or sonorous by turns, and he had the art of using plain and simple words. His physician, Doctor Cloquet, tells how some workmen were seen puzzling over a newspaper and criticizing it rather severely until they came to a speech by Lafayette. "Good!" said the reader, his face clearing. "At least we can understand what this man says. He speaks French."