LAFAYETTE AND OUR FRENCH ALLIES
In 1784 the Marquis de Lafayette returned to Virginia "crowned everywhere," wrote Washington to the Marchioness de Lafayette, "with wreaths of love and respect." He made a visit to Mount Vernon, and thence, before he sailed for France, he went to Fredericksburg to pay his homage to the mother of Washington. A great crowd of citizens and old soldiers thronged the town to do him honor. One of the old soldiers from the country had heard much of a new character who had followed the armies, and had lately appeared in Virginia—active, prevalent, and most successful! This rustic determined to see Lafayette, "pick-pocket" or no "pick-pocket." Had he not two hands! One should never let go a firm grasp on the watch in his own pocket. Finally he succeeded, after pressing through the throng, in reaching the general. In his enthusiasm at being greeted so warmly by the great marquis, he seized with both hands Lafayette's friendly grasp, and as he turned away clapped his hand upon his watch-pocket. It was empty! There is no doubt—not the least—that the honest man never thought his honors too dearly bought.
GENERAL LAFAYETTE.
Escaping from all these good people so keenly and cordially enjoyed by the warm-hearted marquis, he found Betty Washington's son to act as sponsor and guide—lest he should have been forgotten!—to visit the mother of his friend. He wished to pay his parting respects and to ask her blessing.
"Accompanied by her grandson," says Mr. Custis, "he approached the house; when the young gentleman observed, 'There, sir, is my grandmother.' Lafayette beheld, working in the garden, clad in domestic-made clothes, and her gray head covered in a plain straw hat, the mother of his hero! The lady saluted him kindly, observing, 'Ah, Marquis! you see an old woman; but come, I can make you welcome to my poor dwelling, without the parade of changing my dress.'
"The Marquis spoke of the happy effects of the Revolution, and the goodly prospect which opened upon independent America; stated his speedy departure for his native land; paid the tribute of his heart, his love and admiration of her illustrious son. To the encomiums which he had lavished upon his hero and paternal chief, the matron replied in her accustomed words, 'I am not surprised at what George has done, for he was always a very good boy.'
"In her latter days, the mother often spoke of 'her own good boy,' of the merits of his early life, of his love and dutifulness to herself; but of the deliverer of his country, the chief magistrate of the great republic, she never spoke. Call you this insensibility? or want of ambition? Oh, no! her ambition had been gratified to overflowing. She had taught him to be good; that he became great when the opportunity presented, was a consequence, not a cause."
Would that we could record naught but reward—long life, honor, and happiness—to every one of our brave allies who came to us in our extremity. But, alas! Fortune held in her closed hand these gifts for some—for others disgrace, the dungeon, the guillotine!
Louis XVI was overjoyed at the éclat won by the French arms in America. When Rochambeau presented himself at court the young king received him graciously, and said to him, "I have read in the Commentaries of Cæsar that a small army, commanded by a great general, can achieve wonders, and you are a proof of it."
Lafayette threw himself with ardor into the stirring military life of his own country, and came back to us in 1824 to find his path strewn with flowers by Daughters of the American Revolution; and Daughters of the American Revolution but a few months ago crowned his statue with the same laurels with which they crowned the adored Washington!
Great riches and honor were heaped upon the Comte de Vergennes. He was given a position which brought him an income of 60,000 francs. Afterwards the Empress of Russia—as reward—made him Knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost, with 100,000 francs! A serene, very honorable and comfortable old age was Fortune's gift to our friend Vergennes.
And Beaumarchais, who poured money into our empty treasury from his own full horn-of-plenty,—Beaumarchais, the artist, dramatist, politician, merchant, who set all Paris wild with his "Mariage de Figaro," of whose wit and satire and mischievous subtlety our translations give us no idea,—Beaumarchais must needs ruin himself by spending 1,000,000 livres on a gorgeous édition de luxe of Voltaire, and yet more than that on French muskets. He died of "no particular disease," say his biographers, "at sixty-nine years." So Fortune for him had a long life and a merry one, and riches of which he made a noble use.
We all know the fate of the pleasure-loving young king,—the husband of the beautiful and accomplished Marie Antoinette! America, perhaps, owes little to him,—but she remembers that little, and can mourn for the bitter hour that ended his misguided life.
But ungrateful, indeed, would she be did she cease to remember Marie Antoinette! Well may we call our beautiful buildings and graceful fashions after her name. Many years after she had bent her lovely head with such courage to the guillotine, Paine wrote, "It is both justice and gratitude to say that it was the queen of France who gave the cause of America a fashion at the French Court." "Dites-moi," she had said in parting from Lafayette, "dites-moi de bonnes nouvelles de nos bons Americans, de nos cher Republicans," little dreaming, poor lady, that "she was giving the last great impulse to that revolutionary spirit which was so soon to lead her to misery and death."
For one more of the Frenchmen who served us—one who was a loyal friend in the field and a traitor at the fireside—the stern Nemesis holds a strange immortality. The secret manuscript which for one hundred and twenty-five years has passed from hand to hand among Virginia women; which was known to and partially quoted by Bishop Meade; which is known to-day by many who gave, like him, a promise never to print the whole of it, contains the story of a young nobleman's infamy—told that he may be execrated by women, the names implicated kept from publication that the innocent descendants may not suffer. "Sed quid ego hæc nequicquam ingrata revolvo? It is vain to lament that corruption which no human power can prevent or repair."