"LAFAYETTE."
Here, away from the noise of the city, amid silence chaste and sweet, without a monument, lie the remains of one of the greatest men of France. Not in Pere la Chaise, amid grandeur and fashion, but in a little private cemetery, with a cluster of extinguished nobles on one side, and a band of victims of the reign of terror on the other!
We sat down beside his tomb, grateful to the dust beneath our feet for the noble assistance which it gave to the sinking "Old Thirteen," when the soul of Lafayette animated it. How vividly were the days of our long struggle before us. We saw Bunker Hill alive with battalions, and Charlestown lay in flames. Step by step we ran over the bitter struggle, with so much power on one side, and on the other such an amount of determination, but after all so many dark and adverse circumstances, so little physical power in comparison with the hosts arrayed against us. It was when the heart of the nation drooped with an accumulation of misfortune, that Lafayette came and turned the balance in the scales. And we were grateful to him; not so much for what he really accomplished, as for what he attempted—for the daring spirit, the noble generosity!
Then, too, I thought how Lafayette stood between the king and the people, before and after the reign of terror—thought of his devotion to France—of his stern patriotism, which would neither tremble before a king nor an infuriated rabble. Yet he was obliged to fly for life from Paris—from France. He lay in a felon's dungeon in a foreign land, for lack of devotion to kingcraft, and could not return to France because he loved humanity too well. Was it not hard?
France has never been just to her great men. She welcomes to her bosom her most dangerous citizens, and casts out the true and the noble. She did so when she sent Lafayette away. She did so in refusing Lamartine and accepting Louis Napoleon.
THE RADICAL.
When I first visited Paris, while Louis Napoleon was president of the republic instead of emperor, I became acquainted with a young man from America who had lived seventeen years in Paris. He was thoroughly acquainted with every phase of Parisian life, from the highest to the lowest, and knew the principal political characters of the country. He was a thorough radical, and an enthusiast. He came to Paris for an education, and when he had finished it, he had imbibed the most radical opinions respecting human liberty, and as his native town was New Orleans, and his father a wealthy slaveholder, he concluded to remain in Paris. When I found him, he was living in the Latin quarter, among the students, at a cheap, though very neat hotel. He was refined, modest, and highly educated, and was busy in political writing and speculations. At that time he showed me a complete constitution for a "model republic" in France, and a code of laws fit for Paradise rather than France. The documents exhibited great skill and learning, but the impress of an enthusiast was upon them all. By his conduct or manner, the stranger would never have supposed that my friend was enthusiastic. He never indulged in any flights of indignation at the existing state of things, never was thrown off his guard so as to show by his speech or his manner that he was passionately attached to liberal principles. It was only after I had come to know him well, that I discovered this fact—that he was a great enthusiast, and so deeply attached to the purest principles respecting human freedom and happiness, that he would willingly have died for them. Living in Paris, one of the most dissolute cities of the world, he was pure in his morals, and as rigidly honest as any Puritan in Cromwell's day. But with all his own purity he possessed unbounded charity for others. His friends were among all classes, and were good and bad. One day I saw him walking with one of the most distinguished men of France. A few days after, while he was taking a morning walk, he met a university student with a grisette upon his arm—his mistress. The student wished to leave Paris for the day on business, and asked my friend to accompany his mistress back to their rooms. With the utmost composure and politeness the radical offered his arm, and escorted the frail woman to her apartments.
Of course, this man was carefully watched by the police. He was well known, and the eye of the secret police was constantly upon him. He still clung to his old American passport, for it had repeatedly caused him to be respected when other reasons were insufficient.
I one day wrote a note to a friend in a distant part of the city, and was going to drop it into the post-office when my friend, who was with me, remonstrated. "You can walk to the spot and deliver it yourself," said he, "and you will have saved the two sous postage. I am going that way; let me have the postage and I will deliver it."