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Applied Learning
Algorithms for
Intelligent IoT
Applied Learning
Algorithms for
Intelligent IoT

Edited by
Pethuru Raj Chelliah
Usha Sakthivel
Susila Nagarajan
First Edition published [2022]
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
and by CRC Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
The right of Pethuru Raj, Usha Sakthivel, and Susila Nagarajan, to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material and the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author
and publisher cannot assume the responsibility for the validity of all materials or the
consequences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright
holders of all the materials reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders
if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not
been acknowledged, please write and let us know so that we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted,
reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other
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from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access
www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood
Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC, please
contact [email protected]
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-0-367-63594-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-11321-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-11983-8 (ebk)

DOI: 10.1201/9781003119838

Typeset in Caslon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents

CONTRIBUTOR LIST ix

CHAPTER 1 CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORK IN COMPUTER

VISION 1
D. AISHWARYA AND R. I. MINU

CHAPTER 2 TRENDS AND TRANSITION IN THE MACHINE

LEARNING (ML) SPACE 33
SRUTHI ANAND, N. SUSILA, AND USHA SAKTHIVEL

CHAPTER 3 NEXT-GENERATION IOT USE CASES ACROSS

INDUSTRY VERTICALS USING MACHINE LEARNING

ALGORITHMS 57
T. R. KALAIARASAN, SRUTHI ANAND,
V. ANANDKUMAR, AND A. M. RATHEESHKUMAR

CHAPTER 4 A PANORAMIC VIEW OF CYBER ATTACK

DETECTION AND PREVENTION USING MACHINE
LEARNING AND DEEP LEARNING APPROACHES 77
ESTHER DANIEL, N. SUSILA,
AND S. DURGA

v
vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER 5 REGRESSION ALGORITHMS IN MACHINE LEARNING 99

USHA SAKTHIVEL, NEHA SINGHAL,
PETHURU RAJ CHELLIAH, AND ASHWINI R.
MALIPATIL

CHAPTER 6 MACHINE LEARNING-BASED INDUSTRIAL INTERNET

OF THINGS (IIOT) AND ITS APPLICATIONS 123
M. SURESH KUMAR, S. RACHEL,
AND M. V. KAVISELVAN

CHAPTER 7 EMPLOYEE TURNOVER PREDICTION USING SINGLE

VOTING MODEL 153
R. VALARMATHI, M. UMADEVI, AND T. SHEELA

CHAPTER 8 A NOVEL IMPLEMENTATION OF SENTIMENT

ANALYSIS TOWARD DATA SCIENCE 175
VIJAYALAKSHMI SARAVANAN, ISHPREET SINGH,
EMANUEL SZAREK, JEREON HAK,
AND ANJU S. PILLAI

CHAPTER 9 CONSPECTUS OF K-MEANS CLUSTERING

ALGORITHM 193
USHA SAKTHIVEL, A. P. JYOTHI, N. SUSILA,
AND T. SHEELA

CHAPTER 10 SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO DEAL WITH INTERNAL

FRAGMENTATION AND ENHANCING MEMORY SPACE

DURING COVID-19 215
MOHAN APARNA, R. MAHESWARI
AND J. V. THOMAS ABRAHAM

CHAPTER 11 IOT AUTOMATED SPY DRONE TO DETECT AND

ALERT ILLEGAL DRUG PLANTS FOR LAW

ENFORCEMENT 241
GOTLURU ARUN KUMAR, PULUGU YAMINI,
AND R. MAHESWARI

CHAPTER 12 EXPOUNDING K-MEANS-INSPIRED NETWORK

PARTITIONING ALGORITHM FOR SDN CONTROLLER
PLACEMENT 265
J. PUSHPA AND PETHURU RAJ CHELLIAH
 CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER 13 AN INTELLIGENT DEEP LEARNING-BASED WIRELESS

UNDERGROUND SENSOR SYSTEM FOR IOT-BASED

AGRICULTURAL APPLICATION 291

PRISCILLA RAJADURAI
AND G. JASPHER W. KATHRINE

CHAPTER 14 PREDICTING EFFECTIVENESS OF SOLAR POND

HEAT EXCHANGER WITH LTES CONTAINING CUO
NANOPARTICLE USING MACHINE LEARNING 325
K. KARUNAMURTHY, G. SUGANYA, M. ANANTHI,
AND T. SUBHA

INDEX 345
Contributors

J. V. Thomas Abraham V. Anandkumar

School of Computer Science and Department of Information
Engineering (SCOPE) Technology
Vellore Institute of Technology Sri Krishna College of
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Engineering and Technology
D. Aishwarya Coimbatore, India
SRM Institute of Science and
Technology Mohan Aparna
Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, School of Computer Science and
India Engineering (SCOPE)
Vellore Institute of Technology
Sruthi Anand Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Department of Information
Technology Pethuru Raj Chelliah
Sri Krishna College of RJIL College of Engineering
Engineering and Technology and Technology
Coimbatore, India Bengaluru, India

ix
x CONTRIBUTORS

Esther Daniel M. V. Kaviselvan

Department of Computer Science Department of Mechanical
and Engineering, Technology Engineering
Karunya Institute of Technology Sri Sairam Engineering College
and Sciences Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Coimbatore, India
Gotluru Arun Kumar
S. Durga School of Computer Science and
Department of Information Engineering (SCOPE)
Technology Vellore Institute of Technology
Karunya Institute of Technology Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
and Sciences
M. Suresh Kumar
Coimbatore, India
Department of Information,
Jereon Hak Technology
M.S. Student Sri Sairam Engineering College
Rochester Institute of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Technology
R. Maheswari
Rochester, New York, USA
School of Computer Science and
A. P. Jyothi Engineering (SCOPE)
Department of Computer Vellore Institute of Technology
Science and Engineering VTU Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Chennai, India
Ashwini R. Malipatil
T. R. Kalaiarasan Department of CSE
Department of Information Sri Krishna College of
Technology Engineering and Technology
Sri Krishna College of Coimbatore, India
Engineering and Technology
R. I. Minu
Coimbatore, India
SRM Institute of Science and
K. Karunamurthy Technology
Vellore Institute of Technology Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu,
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India India

G. Jaspher W. Kathrine Anju S. Pillai

Karunya Institute of Technology Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
and Sciences Coimbatore, India
Coimbatore, India
 CONTRIBUTORS xi

J. Pushpa T. Sheela
Jain University Department of Information
Bengaluru, India Technology
Sri Sairam Engineering College
S. Rachel
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Department of Information
Technology Ishpreet Singh
Sri Sairam Engineering College M.S. Student
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Rochester Institute of
Technology
Priscilla Rajadurai
Rochester, New York, USA
St. Joseph’s Institute of
Technology Neha Singhal
Chennai, India Department of ISE
Sri Krishna College of
A. M. Ratheeshkumar
Engineering and Technology
Department of Information
Coimbatore, India
Technology
Sri Krishna College of T. Subha
Engineering and Technology Sri Sairam Engineering College
Coimbatore, India Chennai, India

Usha Sakthivel G. Suganya

Dept. of Research and Vellore Institute of Technology
Innovation Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Rajeswari College of
N. Susila
Engineering
Department of Information
Bengaluru, India
Technology
and
Sri Krishna College of
Dept. of Computer Science &
Engineering and Technology
Engineering
Coimbatore, India
Visvesvaraya Technological
University Emanuel Szarek
Belagavi, Karnataka, India M.S. Student
Rochester Institute of
Vijayalakshmi Saravanan
Technology
Faculty Member
Rochester, New York, USA
Rochester Institute of
Technology
Rochester, New York, USA
xii CONTRIBUTORS

M. Umadevi Pulugu Yamini

Department of Computer School of Computer Science and
Science and Engineering Engineering (SCOPE)
SRM Institute of Science and Vellore Institute of Technology
Technology Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

R. Valarmathi
Department of Computer
Science and Engineering
Sri Sairam Engineering
College
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
 1
CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL
NETWORK IN COMPUTER VISION
D. AISHWARYA1 AND R.I. MINU2
1
Research Scholar, SRM Institute of
Science and Technology,
Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, India
2
SRM Institute of Science and
Technology, Kattankulathur,
Tamil Nadu, India

Contents

Introduction 2
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) 4
Distinctive Properties of CNN 5
Activation Functions for CNN 6
Loss Function 8
Datasets and Errors 9
Bias and Variance 9
Overfitting and Underfitting 10
Understanding Padding and Stride 11
Padding 11
Stride 12
Parameters and Hyper Parameters 13
CONV Layer 13
Filter 13
Feature Map 14
Convolution Operation 14
Key Points about Convolution Layers and Filters 16
Pooling Layer 16
Key Points about Pooling Layer 16
Types of Pooling 17
Forward Propagation 18
Calculating the Parameters 18

DOI: 10.1201/9781003119838-1 1
2 APPLIED LEARNING ALGORITHMS FOR INTELLIGENT IOT

Activation Shape and Size 19

Backward Propagation 20
Optimizers 21
Other Ways to Improve the Performance of CNN 21
Image Data Augmentation 21
Deeper Hidden Layers 22
Early Stopping 22
Application of CNN 22
Image Classification 22
RCNN and Object Detection 25
Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN) 26
Fast R-CNN 27
Faster R-CNN 28
You Only Look Once (YOLO) 29
Transfer Learning 29
Transfer Learning for CNN 29
Fine-Tuning or Freezing? 30
Neural Style Transfer (NST) 30

Introduction

Emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has made machines “Smart.”

By “Smart,” we mean the ability of the machine (possibly a com­
puter) to process the given data with rationality, like an intelligent
human being, and take a suitable decision. AI achieves this in­
telligence with the help of its subsets of algorithms (see Figure 1.1).
AI is a broader field that includes machine learning (ML), artificial
neural network (ANN), and deep learning (DL) as its subsets. AI is
achieved by ANN, which is a network of artificial neurons resembling a
biological neuron and the nervous system. ML enables the machines to
process the data, make decision, and optimize the results based on ex­
perience. ML primarily requires a feature engineer to do the feature en­
gineering process. Also, ML works its best for structured dataset (mostly
comprises numerical data) but is proven inefficient for unstructured types.
To process the unstructured and continuous data like video,
speech, etc., we need more complex neural network. Here comes in
the DL with better results on processing the unstructured data. One
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
Cordelières, in which Marat and Danton, those stormy petrels of the Terror, held sway.
This smaller organization influenced even the Jacobins and through them every village in
France. Several of the most radical leaders published newspapers of vast influence, like
Marat's Ami du Peuple, which carried their opinions farther than the spoken word could
do, out into peaceful country lanes. In the cities the great power of the theater was
directed to the same violent ends. In vain the more conservative patriots started clubs of
their own; the others had too great headway. The Feuillants, that Lafayette and Bailly
were instrumental in founding, was called contemptuously the club of the monarchists.
All these changes were gradual, but little by little, as time passed, the aims of the
revolutionists altered. What had been at first a cry for justice became an appeal for
liberty, then a demand for equality, and finally a mad howl for revenge.
 XXIII
POPULARITY AND PRISON

So many local National Guards and revolutionary town governments had been formed
that France was in danger of being split into a thousand self-governing fragments. Some
of these came together in local federations for mutual benefit; and as the anniversary of
the fall of the Bastile rolled around, Paris proposed a grand federation of all such
organizations as a fitting way to celebrate the new national holiday. The idea caught
popular fancy, and the city made ready for it with a feverish good will almost as strange
as that of the memorable night when nobles and clergy in the National Assembly had
vied with one another to give up their century-old privileges.
The spot chosen for the ceremonies was the Champs de Mars, where the Eiffel Tower
now stands. It is a deal nearer the center of Paris now than it was in 1790, when it was
little more than a great field on the banks of the Seine, near the military academy. This
was to be changed into an immense amphitheater three miles in circumference, a work
which required a vast amount of excavating and building and civil engineering. Men and
women of all classes of society volunteered as laborers, and from dawn till dark a
procession, armed with spades and every implement that could possibly be used, passed
ceaselessly between the heart of the city and the scene of the coming festivity. Eye-
witnesses tell us that on arriving each person threw down his coat, his cravat, and his
watch, "abandoning them to the loyalty of the public" and fell to work. "A delicate
duchess might be seen filling a barrow to be trundled away by a fishwife"; or a chevalier
of the Order of Saint-Louis laboring with a hurried, flustered little school-boy; or a priest
and an actor doing excellent team-work together. A hundred orchestras were playing;
workers quitted their labors for a few turns in the dance, then abandoned that again for
toil.
Lafayette encouraged them by his enthusiastic presence, and filled and trundled a barrow
with his own hands; and when the king appeared one day to view the strange scene he
was greeted with extravagant joy. Though this went on for weeks, the undertaking was
so vast and the best efforts of duchesses and school-boys so far from adequate, that a
hurry call had to be sent out, in response to which it was estimated that during the last
few days of preparation two hundred and fifty thousand people were busy there. Evil
rumors were busy, too, under cover of the music, and whispers went through the crowd
that no provisions were to be allowed to enter Paris during the entire week of festivities
and that the field had been honeycombed with secret passages and laid with mines to
blow up the whole great throng. Such rumors were answered by a municipal
proclamation which ended with the words, "Cowards may flee these imaginary dangers:
the friends of Revolution will remain, well knowing that not a second time shall such a
day be seen."
The miracle was accomplished. By the 14th of July the whole Champs de Mars had been
transformed into an amphitheater of terraced greensward, approached through a great
triumphal arch. But on the day itself not a single green terrace was visible, so thick were
the masses of people crowding the amphitheater and covering the hills on the other side
of the river. Opposite the triumphal arch a central pavilion for the king, with covered
galleries on each side, had been built against the walls of the military school. On the level
green in the center of the great Champs de Mars stood an altar to "The Country,"
reached by a flight of fifty steps. One hundred cannon, two thousand musicians, and two
hundred priests with the Tricolor added to their vestments, were present to take part in
the ceremonies. A model of the destroyed Bastile lay at the foot of the altar. Upon the
altar itself were inscriptions, one of which bade the spectators "Ponder the three sacred
words that guarantee our decrees. The Nation, the Law, the King. You are the Nation, the
Law is your will, the King is the head of the Nation and guardian of the Law."
The multitude was treated first to the spectacle of a grand procession streaming through
the three openings of the triumphal arch. Deputies from the provinces, members of the
National Assembly, and representatives of the Paris Commune, with Mayor Bailly at their
head, marched slowly and gravely to their places. After them came the visiting military
delegations, the Paris guards, and regular troops who had been called to Paris from all
parts of the kingdom, to the number of forty thousand or more, each with its distinctive
banner. These marched around the altar and broke into strange dances and mock
combats, undeterred by heavy showers. When the rain fell the ranks of spectators
blossomed into a mass of red and green umbrellas, no longer the novelty they once had
been. When a shower passed umbrellas were furled and the crowd took on another color.
At three o'clock the queen appeared with the Dauphin beside her. Then the king, in
magnificent robes of state, took his seat on a purple chair sown with fleurs-de-lis, which
had been placed on an exact line and level with a similar chair upholstered in blue for the
president of the National Assembly.
The king had been named for that one day Supreme Commander of all the National
Guards of France. He had delegated his powers, whatever they may have been, to
Lafayette; and it was Lafayette on a white horse such as Washington rode who was here,
there, and everywhere, the central figure of the pageant as he moved about fulfilling the
duties of his office. General Thiébault wrote in his Memoirs that the young buoyant figure
on the shining horse, riding through that great mass of men, seemed to be commanding
all France. "Look at him!" cried an enthusiast. "He is galloping through the centuries!"
And it was upon Lafayette, at the crowning moment of the ceremony, that all eyes
rested. After the two hundred priests had solemnly marched to the altar and placed
ahead of all other banners their sacred oriflamme of St.-Denis, Lafayette dismounted and
approached the king to receive his orders. Then, slowly ascending the many steps to the
altar, he laid his sword before it and, turning, faced the soldiers. Every arm was raised
and every voice cried, "I swear!" as he led them in their oath of loyalty; and as if in
answer to the mighty shout, the sun burst at that instant through the stormclouds. Music
and artillery crashed in jubilant sound; other cannon at a distance took up the tale; and
in this way news of the oath was borne to the utmost limits of France. The day ended
with fireworks, dancing, and a great feast. Lafayette was the center of the cheers and
adulation, admirers pressing upon him from all sides. He was even in danger of bodily
harm from the embraces, "perfidious or sincere," of a group of unknown men who had to
be forcibly driven away by his aides-de-camp. That night somebody hung his portrait
upon the railing surrounding the statue of France's hero-king, Henri IV; an act of unwise
enthusiasm or else of very clever malignity of which his critics made the most.
After this, his enemies increased rapidly. The good will and harmony celebrated at the
Feast of the Federation had been more apparent than real; a "delicious intoxication," as
one of the participants called it, and the ill-temper that follows intoxication soon
manifested itself. The Jacobins grew daily more radical. The club did not expel Lafayette;
he left it of his own accord in December, 1790; but that was almost as good for the
purposes of his critics.
The task he had set himself of steering a middle course between extremes became
constantly more difficult. Mirabeau was president of the Jacobin Club after Lafayette left
it, and their mutual distrust increased. Gouverneur Morris thought Lafayette able to hold
his own and that "he was as shrewd as any one." He said that "Mirabeau has the greater
talent, but his adversary the better reputation." In spite of being president of the
Jacobins, Mirabeau was more of a royalist than Lafayette and did what he could to ruin
Lafayette with the court party. The quarrel ended only with Mirabeau's sudden death in
April, 1791. At the other extreme Marat attacked Lafayette for his devotion to the king,
saying he had sold himself to that side. Newspapers circulated evil stories about his
private life. Slanders and attacks, wax figures and cartoons, each a little worse than the
last, flooded Paris at this time. Some coupled the queen's name with his, which increased
her dislike of him, and in the end may have played its small part in her downfall.
The king and queen were watched with lynxlike intensity by all parties, and about three
months after Mirabeau's death they made matters much worse by betraying their fear,
and what many thought their perfidy, in an attempt to escape in disguise, meaning to get
help from outside countries and return to fight for their power. There had been rumors
that they contemplated something of this sort, and Lafayette had gone frankly to the
king, urging him not to commit such folly. The king reassured him, and Lafayette had
announced that he was willing to answer "with his head" that Louis would not leave
Paris. One night, however, rumors were so persistent that Lafayette went himself to the
Tuileries. He talked with a member of the royal family, and the queen saw him when she
was actually on her way to join the king for their flight. Luck and his usual cleverness
both failed Lafayette that night. He suspected nothing, yet next morning it was
discovered that the royal beds had not been slept in and that the fugitives were already
hours on their way. Lafayette issued orders for their arrest, but clamor was loud against
him and Danton was for making him pay literally with his head for his mistake.
Almost at the frontier the king and queen were recognized through the likeness of Louis
to his portrait on the paper money that flooded the kingdom, and they were brought
back to Paris, real prisoners this time. They passed on their way through silent crowds
who eyed them with terrifying hostility. The queen, who was hysterical and bitter, insisted
on treating Lafayette as her personal jailer. Louis, whatever his faults, had a sense of
humor and smiled when Lafayette appeared "to receive the orders of the king," saying it
was evident that orders were to come from the other side. It is strange that he was not
dethroned at once, for he had left behind him a paper agreeing to repeal every law that
had been passed by the National Assembly. Dread of civil war was still strong, however,
even among the radicals, and he was only kept a prisoner in the Tuileries until
September, when the new Constitution was finished and ready for him to sign. After he
swore to uphold it he was again accorded royal honors.
But meantime there had been serious disturbances. Lafayette had felt it his duty to order
the National Guard to fire upon the mob; and for that he was never forgiven. On that
confused day an attempt was made upon his life. The culprit's gun missed fire, and when
he was brought before Lafayette the latter promptly set him at liberty; but before
midnight a mob surrounded Lafayette's house, crying that they had come to murder his
wife and carry her head to the general. The garden wall had been scaled, and they were
about to force an entrance when help arrived.
After the Constitution became the law of the land, Lafayette followed Washington's
example, resigned his military commission, and retired to live at Chavaniac. Several times
before when criticism was very bitter he had offered to give up his sword to the
Commune, but there had been no one either willing or able to take his place and he had
been persuaded to remain. Now he felt that he could withdraw with dignity and a clear
conscience. In accepting his resignation the Commune voted him a medal of gold. The
National Guard presented him with a sword whose blade was made from locks of the old
Bastille, and on his 360-mile journey to Chavaniac he received civic crowns enough to fill
his carriage. His reception at home was in keeping with all this. "Since you are
superstitious," he wrote Washington, "I will tell you that I arrived here on the anniversary
of the surrender of Cornwallis." But even in far-away Chavaniac there were ugly rumors
and threats against his life. The local guard volunteered to keep a special watch; an offer
he declined with thanks.
Bailly retired as mayor of Paris soon after this, whereupon Lafayette's friends put up his
name as a candidate. The election went against him two to one in favor of Pétion, a
Jacobin, and from that time the clubs held undisputed sway. According to law the new
Assembly had to be elected from men who had not served in the old one; this was
unfortunate, since it deprived the new body of experienced legislators. The pronounced
royalists in the Assembly had now dwindled to a scanty hundred.
Neighboring powers showed signs of coming to the aid of Louis, and the country did not
choose to wait until foreign soldiers crossed its frontiers. Nobody knew better than
Lafayette how unprepared France was for war against a well-equipped enemy, but the
marvels America had accomplished with scarcely any equipment were fresh in his
memory, and he looked upon foreign war as a means of uniting quarreling factions at
home—a dangerous sort of political back-fire, by no means new, but sometimes
successful. Before December, 1791, three armies had been formed for protection.
Lafayette was put in command of one of them, his friend Rochambeau of another, and
the third was given to General Luckner, a Bavarian who had served France faithfully since
the Seven Years' War.
Lafayette's new commission bore the signature of the king. He hurried to Paris, thanked
his sovereign, paid his respects to the Assembly, and departed for Metz on Christmas Day
in a semblance of his old popularity, escorted to the city barriers by a throng of people
and a detachment of the National Guard. He entered on his military duties with
enthusiasm, besieging the Assembly with reports of all the army lacked, consulting with
his co-commanders, and putting his men through stiff drill.
By May war had been declared against Sardinia, Bohemia, and Hungary, but the back-fire
against anarchy did not work. Troubles at home increased. The Paris mob became more
lawless, and on the 20th of June, 1792, the Tuileries was invaded and the king was
forced to don the red cap of Liberty; a serio-comic incident that might easily have
become tragedy if Louis had possessed more spirit. Lafayette spoke the truth about this
king when he said that he "desired only comfort and tranquillity—beginning with his
own."
Feeling that his monarch had been insulted, Lafayette hurried off to Paris to use his
influence against the Jacobins. He went without specific leave, though without being
forbidden by General Luckner, his superior officer, who knew his plan. To his intense
chagrin he found that he no longer had an atom of influence in Paris. The court received
him coldly, the Assembly was completely in the hands of the Jacobins, timid people were
too frightened to show their real feelings, and the National Guard, upon whose support
Lafayette had confidently relied, was now in favor of doing away with kingship altogether.
Lafayette could not succor people who refused to be helped, and he returned to the
army, followed by loud accusations that he had been absent without leave and that he
was "the greatest of criminals." "Strike Lafayette and the nation is saved!" Robespierre
had shouted, even before he appeared on his fruitless mission. "Truly," wrote Gouverneur
Morris, "I believe if Lafayette should come to Paris at this moment without his army he
would be knifed. What, I pray you, is popularity?"
In July Prussia joined the nations at war, threatening dire vengeance if Paris harmed even
a hair of the king or queen. The mob clamorously paraded the streets, led by five
hundred men from Marseilles, singing a new and strangely exciting song whose music
and whose words, "To arms! To arms! Strike down the tyrant!" were alike incendiary. In
spite of his recent rebuff, Lafayette made one more attempt to rescue the king, not for
love of Louis or of monarchy, but because he believed that Louis now stood for sane
government, having signed the Constitution. It is doubtful whether the plan could have
succeeded; it was one of Lafayette's generous dreams, based on very slight foundation.
He wanted to have himself and General Luckner called to Paris for the coming celebration
of July 14th. At that time, making no secret of it, the king should go with his generals
before the Assembly and announce his intention of spending a few days at Compiègne,
as he had a perfect right to do. Once away from Paris and surrounded by the loyal troops
the two generals would have taken care to bring with them, Louis could issue a
proclamation forbidding his brothers and other émigrés to continue their plans and could
say that he was himself at the head of an army to resist foreign invasion; and, having
taken the wind out of the sails of the Jacobins by this unexpected move, could return to
Paris to be acclaimed by all moderate, peace-loving men.
There were personal friends of the king who urged him to try this as the one remaining
possibility of safety. Others thought it might save Louis, but could not save the monarchy.
The queen quoted words of Mirabeau's about Lafayette's ambition to keep the king a
prisoner in his tent. "Besides," she added, "it would be too humiliating to owe our lives a
second time to that man." So Lafayette was thanked for his interest and his help was
refused. On the 10th of August there was another invasion of the Tuileries, followed this
time by the massacre of the Swiss Guard. The royal family, rescued from the palace, was
kept for safety for three days in a little room behind the one in which the Assembly held
its sessions; then it was lodged, under the cruel protection of the Commune, in the small
medieval prison called the Temple, in the heart of Paris.
With the Commune in full control, it was not long before an accusation was officially
made against Lafayette. "Evidence" to bear it out was speedily found; and on August
19th, less than ten days after the imprisonment of the king, the Assembly, at the bidding
of the Commune, declared Lafayette a traitor. He knew he had nothing to hope from his
own troops, for only a few days before this his proposal that they renew their oath of
fidelity to the Nation, the Law, and the King had met with murmurs of disapproval, until
one young captain, making himself spokesman, had declared that Liberty, Equality, and
the National Assembly were the only names to which the soldiers could pledge allegiance.
Lafayette still had faith in the future, but the present offered only two alternatives—flight,
or staying quietly where he was to be arrested and carried to Paris, where he would be
put to death as surely as the sun rose in the east. This was what his Jacobin friends
seemed to expect him to do, and they assailed him bitterly for taking the other course.
He could not see that his death at this time and in this way would help the cause of civil
liberty. He said that if he must die he preferred to perish at the hands of foreign tyrants
rather than by those of his misguided fellow-countrymen. He placed his soldiers in the
best position to offset any advantage the enemy might gain through his flight, and, with
about a score of officers and friends, crossed the frontier into Liège on the night of
August 20th, meaning to make his way to Holland and later to England. From England, in
case he could not return and aid France, he meant to go to America.
Instead of that, the party rode straight into the camp of an Austrian advance-guard.
 XXIV
SOUTH CAROLINA TO THE RESCUE!

It was eight o'clock at night, a few leagues from the French border. Their horses were
weary and spent. The road approached the village of Rochefort in such a way that they
could see nothing of the town until almost upon it, and the gleam of this camp-fire was
their first intimation of the presence of the Austrians. It would have availed nothing to
turn back. If they went toward the left they would almost certainly fall in with French
patrols, or those of the émigrés who were at Liège. To the right a whole chain of Austrian
posts stretched toward Namur. "On all sides there was an equality of inconvenience," as
Lafayette said. One of the party rode boldly forward to interview the commandant and
ask permission to spend the night in the village and continue the journey next day. This
was granted after it had been explained that they were neither émigrés nor soldiers on
their way to join either side, but officers forced to leave the French army, whose only
desire was to reach a neutral country.
A guide was sent to conduct them to the village inn. Before they had been there many
minutes Lafayette was recognized, and it was necessary to confess the whole truth. The
local commander required a pass from the officer at Namur, and when that person
learned the name of his chief prisoner he would hear nothing more about passports, but
communicated in joyful haste with his superior officer, the Duc de Bourbon. At Namur
Lafayette received a visit from Prince Charles of Lorraine, who sent word in advance that
he wished "to talk about the condition in which Lafayette had left France." Lafayette
replied that he did not suppose he was to be asked questions it might be inconvenient to
answer, and when the high-born caller entered with his most affable manner he was
received with distant coolness by all the prisoners.
From Namur they were taken to Nivelles, where they were presented with a government
order to give up all French treasure in their possession. Lafayette could not resist
answering that he was quite sure their Royal Highnesses would have brought the
treasure with them had they been in his place; and the amusement of the Frenchmen
increased as the messenger learned, to his evident discomfiture, that the twenty-three of
them combined did not have enough to keep them in comfort for two months. That same
day the prisoners were divided into three groups. Those who had not served in the
French National Guard were given their liberty and told to leave the country. Others were
sent to the citadel at Antwerp and kept there for two months. Lafayette and three
companions who had served with him in the Assembly, Latour Maubourg, a lifelong
friend, Alexander Lameth, and Bureaux de Pusy, were taken to Luxembourg. There was
only time for a hurried leave-taking. Lafayette spent it with an aide who was to go to
Antwerp. Feeling sure he was marked for death, he dictated to this officer a message to
be published to the French people when he should be no more.
Before leaving Rochefort he had found means of sending a letter to his wife, who was at
Chavaniac overseeing repairs upon the old manor-house. It was from this letter that she
learned what had befallen him, and she carried it in her bosom until she was arrested in
her turn. The message to Adrienne began characteristically on a note of optimism.
"Whatever the vicissitudes of fortune, dear heart, you know my soul is not of a temper to
be cast down." He told of his misfortune in a gallant way, saying the Austrian officer
thought it his duty to arrest him. He hurriedly reviewed the reasons that led up to his
flight, said that he did not know how long his journey "might be retarded," and bade her
join him in England with all the family. His closing words were: "I offer no excuses to my
children or to you for having ruined my family. There is not one of you who would owe
fortune to conduct contrary to my conscience. Come to me in England. Let us establish
ourselves in America, where we shall find a liberty which no longer exists in France, and
there my tenderness will endeavor to make up to you the joys you have lost."
His journey was "retarded" for five years, and for a large part of that time seemed likely
to end only at the grave, possibly by way of the executioner's block. It is to be hoped
that his sense of humor allowed him to enjoy one phase of his situation. He had been
driven from France on the charge that he favored the king, yet he was no sooner across
the border than he was arrested on exactly the opposite charge; that of being a
dangerous revolutionist, an enemy to all monarchs. When he demanded a passport he
received the sinister answer that he was to be kept safely until the French king regained
his power and was in a position to sentence him himself. He was sent from prison to
prison. First to Wezel, where he remained three months in a rat-infested dungeon, unable
to communicate with any one, and watched over by an officer of the guard who was
made to take a daily oath to give him no news. "One would think," said Lafayette, "that
they had imprisoned the devil himself." He was so thoroughly isolated that Latour
Maubourg, a few cells away, learned only through the indiscretion of a jailer that he was
seriously ill. Maubourg asked permission, in case the illness proved fatal, to be with him
at the last, but was told that no such privilege could be granted. But Lafayette did not die
and even in the worst of his physical ills had the spirit to reply, "The King of Prussia is
impertinent!" when a royal message came offering to soften the rigors of his captivity in
return for information about France. The message was from that "honest prince" who in
Lafayette's opinion "would never have the genius of his uncle."
Another answer, equally inconsiderate of royal feelings, resulted in the transfer of the
prisoners to Magdebourg, where they were kept a year. On these journeys from place to
place they served as a show to hundreds who pressed to see them. There were even
attempts to injure them, but Lafayette believed he saw more pitying faces than hostile
ones in the crowds. Once fate brought them to an inn at the same moment with the
Comte d'Artois and his retinue, all of whom, with a single exception, proved blind to the
presence of their former friends. We have details of the way in which Lafayette was
lodged and treated at Magdebourg, from a letter he managed to send to his stanch
friend, the Princesse d'Hénin in London.
"Imagine an opening under the rampart of the citadel, surrounded by a high, strong
palisade. It is through that, after opening successively four doors each guarded with
chains and padlocks and bars of iron, that one reaches, not without some trouble and
some noise, my dungeon, which is three paces wide and five and a half long. The side
wall is covered with mold; that in front lets in light, but not the sun, through a small
barred window. Add to this two sentinels who can look down into our subterranean
chamber, but are outside the palisade so that we cannot speak to them.... The noisy
opening of our four doors occurs every morning to allow my servant to enter; at dinner-
time, that I may dine in presence of the commandant of the citadel and of the guard;
and at night when my servant is taken away to his cell." The one ornament on his prison
wall was a French inscription, in which the dismal words souffrir and mourir were made
to rhyme. The one break in the prison routine had been an execution, upon which, had
he chosen, Lafayette could have looked from his window as from a box at the opera.
After a year of this he was moved again and turned over to the Emperor of Prussia, his
prison journeys ending finally at the gloomy fortress of Olmütz in the Carpathian
Mountains. Something may be said in defense of the severity with which his captors
guarded him. He steadfastly refused to give his parole, preferring, he said, to take his
liberty instead of having it granted him. This undoubtedly added a zest to life in prison
which would otherwise have been lacking, and very likely contributed not a little to his
serenity and even to his physical well-being. It transformed the uncomfortable prison
routine into a contest of wits, with the odds greatly against him, but which left him
honorably free to seize any advantage that came his way. He foiled the refusal to allow
him writing materials by writing letters as he wrote that one to Madame d'Hénin, with
vinegar and lampblack in a book on a blank leaf which had escaped the vigilant eye of his
guard. Knowing very little German, he dug out of his memory forgotten bits of school-day
Latin to use upon his jailers. He took every bit of exercise allowed him in order to keep
up his physical strength. He believed he might have need of it. He even lived his life with
a certain gay zest, and took particular delight in celebrating the Fourth of July, 1793, in
his lonely cell by writing a letter to the American minister at London. He gave his vivid
imagination free rein in concocting plans of escape.
Friends on the outside were busy with plans, too; and though he got no definite news of
them, his optimism was too great to permit him to doubt that they were doing everything
possible for his release. At the very outset of his captivity he applied to be set free on the
ground that he was an American citizen, though there was small chance of the request
being granted. He was sure Washington would not forget him; he knew that Gouverneur
Morris had deposited a sum of money with his captors upon which he might draw at
need. Madame de Staël, the daughter of Necker, and the Princesse d'Hénin were in
London, busy exercising feminine influence in his behalf. General Cornwallis and General
Tarleton had interceded for him, and later he learned that Fitzpatrick, the young
Englishman he had liked on their first meeting in London, the same who afterward
carried letters for him from America, had spoken for him in Parliament. Fox and Sheridan
and Wilberforce added their eloquence; but the cautious House of Commons decided it
was none of its business and voted against the proposal to ask for Lafayette's release, in
the same proportion that the citizens of Paris had rejected him for mayor.
French voices also were raised in his behalf. One of the earliest and most courageous was
that of Lally Tollendal, who as member of the French Assembly had quarreled with
Lafayette for being so much of a monarchist. But later he changed his mind and acted as
go-between in the negotiations for Lafayette's final plan to remove the royal family to
Compiègne. From his exile in London Lally Tollendal now addressed a memorial to
Frederick William II, telling him the plain truth, that it was unjust to keep Lafayette in jail
as an enemy of the French king, because it was an effort to save Louis which had proved
his ruin. "Those who regard M. de Lafayette as the cause, or even one of the causes, of
the French Revolution are entirely wrong," this friend asserted. "He has played a great
role, but he was not the author of the piece.... He has not taken part in a single one of its
evils which would not have happened without him, while the good he did was done by
him alone."
Then Lally Tollendal went on to tell how on the Sunday after Louis was arrested and
brought back from Varennes Lafayette by one single emphatic statement had put an end,
in a committee of the Assembly, to an ugly discussion about executing the king and
proclaiming a republic. "I warn you," he had said, "that the day after you kill the king the
National Guard and I will proclaim the prince royal." Lally Tollendal expatiated upon how
evenly Lafayette had tried to deal out justice to royalists and revolutionists alike; how in
the last days of his liberty he had said in so many words that the Jacobins must be
destroyed; and that he had with difficulty been restrained from raising a flag bearing the
words, "No Jacobins, no Coblenz," as a banner around which friends of the king and
conservative republicans might rally. But the strict impartiality this disclosed had little
charm for a king of Prussia and the appeal bore no fruit.
There were more thrilling efforts to aid him close at hand. "It is a whole romance, the
attempt at rescuing Lafayette," says a French biographer. The opening scene of this
romance harks back to the night when Lafayette made his first landing on American soil,
piloted through the dark by Major Huger's slaves. The least noticed actor in that night's
drama had been Major Huger's son, a very small boy, who hung upon the words of the
unexpected guests and followed them with round, child eyes. Much had happened to
change two hemispheres since, and even greater changes had occurred in the person of
that small boy. He had grown up, he had resolved to be a surgeon, had finished his
studies in London, and betaken himself to Vienna to pursue them further. There in the
autumn of 1794 in a café he encountered a Doctor Bollman of Hanover. They fell into
conversation, and before long Bollman confided to Huger that he had a secret mission.
He had been charged by Lally Tollendal and American friends of Lafayette then in London
to find out where the prisoner was and to plan for his escape. In his search he had
traveled up and down Germany as a wealthy physician who took an interest in the
unfortunate, particularly in prisoners, and treated them free of charge. For a long time he
had found no clue, but at Olmütz, whose fortifications proved too strong in days past
even for Frederick the Great, he had been invited to dinner by the prison doctor and in
turn had entertained him, plying him well with wine. They talked about prisoners of note.
The prison doctor admitted that he had one now on his hands; and before the dinner was
over Bollman had sent an innocent-sounding message to Lafayette. Later he was allowed
to send him a book, with a few written lines purporting to be nothing more than the
names of some friends then in London.
When the book was returned Bollman lost no time in searching it for hidden writing. In
this way he learned that Lafayette had lately been allowed to drive out on certain days a
league or two from the prison for the benefit of his health, and that his guard on such
occasions consisted of a stupid lieutenant and the corporal who drove the carriage. The
latter was something of a coward. Lafayette would undertake to look after both of them
himself if a rescuer and one trusty helper should appear. No weapons need be provided;
he would take the officer's own sword away from him. All he wanted was an extra horse
or two, with the assurance that his deliverers were ready. It was a bold plan, but only a
bold plan could succeed. There were too many bolts and bars inside the prison to make
any other kind feasible. Lameth had been set at liberty; his two other friends, Latour
Maubourg and Bureaux de Pusy, were in full sympathy with the plan, and to make it
easier had refrained from asking the privilege of driving out themselves. Bollman added
that he could not manage the rescue alone and had come away to hunt for a trusty
confederate. Huger had already told of his unforgotten meeting with Lafayette, and there
was no mistaking the eagerness with which he awaited Bollman's next word or the joy
with which he accepted the invitation to take part in the rescue. He was moved by
something deeper than mere love of adventure. "I simply considered myself the
representative of the young men of America and acted accordingly," he said long after.
The two men returned to Olmütz and put up at the inn where Bollman had stayed before.
They managed to send a note to Lafayette. His answer told them he would leave the
prison on November 8th for his next drive, how he would be dressed, and the signal by
which they might know he was ready. It was a market day, with many persons on the
road. They paid their score, sent their servants ahead with the traveling-carriage and
luggage to await their arrival at a town called Hoff, while they came more slowly on
horseback. Then they rode out of the gray old town. Neither its Gothic churches, its
hoary university, nor the ingenious astronomical clock that had rung the hours from its
tower for three hundred and seventy years; not even the fortifications or the prison itself,
built on a plain so bare that all who left it were in full view of the sentinels at the city
gates, interested these travelers as did the passers-by. Presently a small phæton
containing an officer and a civilian was driven toward them, and as it went by the pale
gentleman in a blue greatcoat raised his hand to pass a white handkerchief over his
forehead. The riders bowed slightly and tried to look indifferent, but that was hard work.
Turning as soon as they dared, they saw that the carriage had stopped by the side of the
road. Its two passengers alighted; the gentleman in blue handed a piece of money to the
driver, who drove off as though going on an errand. Then leaning heavily upon the
officer, seeming to find difficulty in walking, he drew him toward a footpath. But at the
sound of approaching horsemen, he suddenly seized the officer's sword and attempted to
wrench it from its scabbard. The officer grappled with him. Bollman and Huger flew to his
assistance. In the act of dismounting Bollman drew his sword and his horse, startled by
the flashing steel, plunged and bolted. Huger managed to keep hold of his own bridle,
while he helped Bollman tear away the officer's hands that were closing about Lafayette's
throat. The Austrian wrenched himself free and ran toward the town, shouting with all his
might.
Here were three men in desperate need of flight, the alarm already raised, and only two
horses to carry them to safety—one of these running wild. Huger acted with Southern
gallantry and American speed. He got Lafayette upon his own steed, shouted to him to
"Go to Hoff!" and caught the other horse. Misunderstanding the injunction, Lafayette,
who thought he had merely been told to "Go off," rode a few steps, then turned back to
help his rescuers. They motioned him away and he disappeared, in the wrong direction.
The remaining horse reared and plunged, refusing to carry double. Huger persuaded
Bollman to mount him, since he could be of far greater use to Lafayette, and saw him
gallop away. By that time a detachment of soldiers was bearing down upon him, and
between their guns he entered the prison Lafayette had so lately quitted.
At the end of twenty miles Lafayette had to change horses. He appealed to an honest-
looking peasant, who helped him to find another one, but also ran to warn the
authorities. These became suspicious when they saw Lafayette's wounded hand, which
had been bitten by the officer almost to the bone. They arrested him on general
principles and he was carried back to a captivity more onerous than before. He was
deprived of all rides, of course, of all news, even of the watch and shoe-buckles which up
to this time he had been allowed to retain. Bollman reached Hoff and waited for Lafayette
until nightfall, then made his way into Silesia. But he was captured and returned to
Austria and finally to Olmütz.
The treatment accorded Lafayette's would-be rescuers was barbarous in the extreme.
Huger was chained hand and foot in an underground cell, where he listened to realistic
descriptions of beheadings, and, worse still, of how prisoners were walled up and
forgotten. Daily questions and threats of torture were tried to make him confess that the
attempt was part of a wide-spread conspiracy. As his statements and his courage did not
waver, the prison authorities came at last to believe him, and he was taken to a cell
aboveground where it was possible to move three steps, though he was still chained. He
found that Bollman was confined in the cell just above him. The latter let down a walnut
shell containing a bit of ink and also a scrap of paper. With these Huger wrote a few lines
to the American minister at London, telling of their plight and ending with the three
eloquent words, "Don't forget us!"—doubly eloquent to one who knew those stories of
walled-up prisoners underground. They bribed the guard to smuggle this out of the
prison, and in time it reached its destination. The American minister did not forget them.
Through his good offices they were released and told to leave the country. They waited
for no second invitation, which was very wise, because the emperor repented his
clemency. He sent an order for their rearrest, but it arrived, fortunately, just too late to
prevent their escape across the border.
 XXV
VOLUNTEERS IN MISFORTUNE

Lafayette, in his uncomfortable cell, was left in complete ignorance of the fate of Bollman
and Huger, though given to understand that they had been executed or soon would be,
perhaps under his own window. The long, dreary days wore on until more than a year
had passed, with little to make one day different from another, though occasionally he
was able to communicate with Pusy or Maubourg through the ingenuity of his "secretary,"
young Felix Pontonnier, a lad of sixteen, who had managed to cling to him with the
devotion of a dog through all his misfortunes. Prison air was hard upon this boy and
prison officials were harder still, but his spirits were invincible. He whistled like a bird, he
made grotesque motions, he talked gibberish, and these antics were not without point.
They were a language of his own devising, by means of which he conveyed to the
prisoners such scraps of information as came to him from the outside world.
His master had need of all Felix's cheer to help him bear up against the anxiety that grew
with each bit of news from France, and grew greater still because of the absence of news
from those he loved best. For the first seven months he heard not a word from wife and
children, though soon after his capture he learned about the early days of September in
Paris, when the barriers had been closed and houses were searched and prisons "purged"
of those suspected of sympathy with the aristocracy. Since then he had heard from his
wife; but he had also learned of the trial and death of the king; and rumors had come to
him of the Terror. Adrienne's steadfastness had been demonstrated to him through all the
years of their married life. Where principle was involved he knew she would not falter;
and he had little hope that she could have escaped imprisonment or a worse fate. He had
heard absolutely nothing from her now for eighteen months. His captivity has been called
"a night five years long," and this was its darkest hour.
Then one day, without the least previous warning, the bolts and bars of his cell creaked
at an unusual hour; they were pushed back—and he looked into the faces of his wife and
daughters. The authorities broke in upon the first instant of incredulous recognition to
search their new charges; possessed themselves of their purses and the three silver forks
in their modest luggage, and disappeared. The complaining bolts slid into place once
more and a new prison routine began, difficult to bear in spite of the companionship,
when he saw unnecessary hardships press cruelly upon these devoted women. Bit by bit
he learned what had happened in the outside world: events of national importance of
which he had not heard in his dungeon, and also little incidents that touched only his
personal history; for instance, the ceremonies with which the Commune publicly broke
the mold for the Lafayette medal, and how the mob had howled around his Paris house,
clamoring to tear it down and raise a "column of infamy" in its place. He forbore to ask
questions at first, knowing how tragic the tale must be, and it was only after the girls had
been led away that first night and locked into the cell where they were to sleep that he
learned of the grief that had come to Adrienne about a week before the Terror came to
an end—the execution on a single day of her mother, her grandmother, and her beloved
sister Louise.
In time he learned all the details of her own story: the months she had been under
parole at Chavaniac, where through the kind offices of Gouverneur Morris she received at
last the letter from her husband telling her that he was well. Her one desire had been to
join him, but there was the old aunt to be provided for, and there were also pressing
debts to settle; a difficult matter after Lafayette's property was confiscated and sold. Mr.
Morris lent her the necessary money, assuring her that if she could not repay it
Americans would willingly assume it as part of the far larger debt their country owed her
husband.
She asked to be released from her parole in order to go into Germany to share his prison.
Instead she had been cast into prison on her own account. The children's tutor, M. de
Frestel, who had been their father's tutor before them, conspired with the servants and
sold their bits of valuables that she might make the journey to prison in greater comfort.
He contrived, too, that the mother might see her children before she was taken off to
Paris, and she made them promise, in the event of her death, to make every effort to
rejoin their father. In Paris she lived through many months of prison horror, confined part
of the time in the old Collège Du Plessis where Lafayette had spent his boyhood, seeing
every morning victims carried forth to their death and expecting every day to be ordered
to mount into the tumbrels with them. Had she known it, she was inquired for every
morning at the prison door by a faithful maidservant, who in this way kept her children
informed of her fate. George was in England with his tutor. At Chavaniac the little girls
were being fed by the peasants, as was the old aunt, for the manor-house had been sold
and the old lady had been allowed to buy back literally nothing except her own bed.
At last Robespierre himself died under the guillotine and toward the end of September,
1794, a less bloodthirsty committee visited the prisons to decide the fate of their inmates.
Adrienne Lafayette was the last to be examined at Du Plessis. Her husband was so hated
that no one dared speak her name. She pronounced it clearly and proudly as she had
spoken and written it ever since misfortune came upon her. It was decided that the wife
of so great a criminal must be judged by higher authority; meanwhile she was to be kept
under lock and key. James Monroe, who was now American minister to Paris, interceded
for her, but she was only transferred to another prison. Here a worthy priest, disguised as
a carpenter, came to her to tell her how on a day in July the three women dearest to her
had been beheaded, and how he, running beside the tumbrel through the storm that
drenched them on their way to execution, had been able, at no small risk to himself, to
offer them secretly the consolations of religion.
Finally in January, 1795, largely through the efforts of Mr. Monroe, she was released. Her
first care was to make a visit of thanks to Mr. Monroe and to ask him to continue his
kindness by obtaining a passport for herself and her girls so that they might seek out her
husband. George was to be sent to America, for she felt sure that his father, if still alive,
would desire him to be there for a time under the care of Washington, and, if he had
perished in prison, would have wished his son to grow up an American citizen.
Getting the passport proved a long and difficult undertaking. When issued it was to
permit Madame Motier of Hartford, Connecticut, and her two daughters to return to
America. It was necessary to begin the journey in accordance with this, and they
embarked at Dunkirk on a small American vessel bound for Hamburg. There they left the
ship and went to Vienna on another passport, but still as the American family named
Motier. In Vienna the American family hid itself very effectively through the help of old
friends, and Adrienne contrived to be received by the emperor himself, quite unknown to
his ministers. His manner to her and her girls was so gracious that she came away "in an
ecstasy of joy," though he told her he could not release the prisoner. She was so sure her
husband was well treated and so jubilant over the emperor's permission to write directly
to him if she had reason to complain, that she was not at all cast down by the warnings
and evident unfriendliness of the prime minister and the minister of war with whom she
next sought interviews.
Leaving Vienna by carriage, she and her daughters traveled all one day and part of the
next northward into the rugged Carpathian country before an interested postboy pointed
out the steeples and towers of Olmütz. Once in the town, they drove straight to the
house of the commandant, who took good care not to expose his heart to pity by seeing
these women, but sent the officer in charge of the prison to open its doors and admit
them to its cold welcome.
The room in which they found Lafayette did well enough in point of size and of
furnishings. It was a vaulted stone chamber facing south, twenty-four feet long, fifteen
wide, and twelve high. Light entered by means of a fairly large window shut at the top
with a padlock, but which could be opened at the bottom, where it was protected by a
double iron grating. The furnishings consisted of a bed, a table, chairs, a chest of
drawers, and a stove; and this room opened into another of equal size which served as
an antechamber. The vileness consisted in the sights and smells outside the window and
the dirt within.
The routine that began when the door of this room opened so unexpectedly to admit
Lafayette's wife and daughters continued for almost two years. Madame Lafayette
described it in a letter to her aunt, Madame de Tessé, an exile in Holstein, with whom she
and her girls spent a few days after leaving the ship at Hamburg. "At last, my dear aunt,
I can write you secretly. Friends risk their liberty, their life, to transmit our letters and will
charge themselves with this one for you.... Thanks to your good advice, dear aunt, I took
the sole means of reaching here. If I had been announced I would never have succeeded
in entering the domains of the emperor.... Do you wish details of our present life? They
bring our breakfast at eight o'clock in the morning, after which I am locked with the girls
until noon. We are reunited for dinner, and though our jailers enter twice to remove the
dishes and bring in our supper, we remain together until they come at eight o'clock to
take my daughters back to their cage. The keys are carried each time to the commandant
and shut up with absurd precautions. They pay, with my money, the expenses of all
three, and we have enough to eat, but it is inexpressibly dirty.
"The physician, who does not understand a word of French, is brought to us by an officer
when we have need of him. We like him. M. de Lafayette, in the presence of the officer,
who understands Latin, speaks with him in that language and translates for us. When this
officer, a huge corporal of a jailer, who does not dare to speak to us himself without
witnesses, comes with his great trousseau of keys in his hand to unpadlock our doors,
while the whole guard is drawn up outside in the corridor and the entrance to our rooms
is half opened by two sentinels, you would laugh to see our two girls, one blushing to her
ears, the other with a manner now proud, now comic, passing under their crossed
sabers; after which the doors of our cells at once close. What is not pleasant is that the
little court on the same level with the corridor is the scene of frequent punishment of the
soldiers, who are there beaten with whips, and we hear the horrible music. It is a great
cause of thankfulness to us that our children up to the present time have borne up well
under this unhealthy regime. As for myself, I admit that my health is not good."
It was so far from good that she asked leave to go to Vienna for a week for expert
medical advice, but was told, after waiting long for an answer of any kind, that she had
voluntarily put herself under the conditions to which her husband was subject, and that if
she left Olmütz she could not return. "You know already that the idea of leaving M. de
Lafayette could not be entertained by any one of us. The good we do him is not confined
to the mere pleasure of seeing us. His health has been really better since we arrived. You
know the influence of moral affections upon him, and however strong his character, I
cannot conceive that it could resist so many tortures. His excessive thinness and his
wasting away have remained at the same point since our arrival, but his guardians and
he assure me that it is nothing compared to the horrible state he was in a year ago. One
cannot spend four years in such captivity without serious consequences. I have not been
able to see Messrs. Maubourg and Pusy, or even to hear their voices. Judging from the
number of years with which their so-called guardians credit them, they must have aged
frightfully. Their sufferings here are all the harder for us to bear because these two loyal
and generous friends of M. de Lafayette have never for an instant permitted their case to
be considered separately from his own. You will not be surprised that he has enjoined
them never to speak for him, no matter what may be the occasion or the interest, except
in a manner in harmony with his character and principles; and that he pushes to excess
what you call 'the weakness of a grand passion.'"
So, in mingled content and hardship, the days passed. The young girls brought a certain
amount of gaiety into the gray cell, even of material well-being. After their arrival their
father was supplied with his first new clothing since becoming a prisoner, garments of
rough cloth, cut out "by guesswork," that his jailer rudely declared were good enough for
him. Out of the discarded coat Anastasie contrived shoes to replace the pair that was
fairly dropping off his feet; and one of the girls took revenge upon the jailer by drawing a
caricature of him on a precious scrap of paper which was hidden and saved and had a
proud place in their home many years later. Madame Lafayette, though more gravely ill
than she allowed her family to know, devoted herself alternately to her husband and to
the education of the girls; and in hours which she felt she had a right to call her own
wrote with toothpick and lampblack upon the margins of a volume of Buffon that
biography of her mother, the unfortunate Madame d'Ayen, which is such a marvel of
tender devotion. In the evenings, before his daughters were hurried away to their
enforced early bedtime, Lafayette read aloud from some old book. New volumes were not
allowed; "everything published since 1788 was proscribed," says a prison letter of La tour
de Maubourg's, "even though it were an Imitation of Jesus Christ."
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."
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.
 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
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 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 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 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.
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 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 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, 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."
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 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 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.
 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, 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 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 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 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 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.
MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE IN 1824
From a painting by William Birch
 MADAME DE LAFAYETTE
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 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 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 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 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 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.
 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 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, 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 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
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.