"What would I have done with the Queen?" asked the aged Jefferson. "I should have shut her up in a convent, putting harm out of her power. I have ever believed if there had been no Queen there would have been no French Revolution."
Lafayette went to Montpelier to see Madison, and then to Yorktown, over the same road which he himself had opened in 1781 in the retreat before Cornwallis. One long ovation followed his route. Even old ladies who had seen him in their youth pressed forward with the plea, "Let me see the young Marquis again!" forgetful of the flight of years. Echoes of his triumphal tour had reached the border. St. Louis, a city and a State not dreamed of in Revolutionary days, begged the honour of entertaining Lafayette.
Far down the river they saw the smoke of his steamer, coming up from New Orleans.
"Welcome!" the hills echoed. "Vive Lafayette!"
The Marquis lifted his eyes,—white stone houses gay with gardens and clusters of verdure arose before him in a town of five thousand inhabitants. Below stood the massive stone forts of the Spanish time, and on the brow of the bluff frowned the old round tower, the last fading relic of feudalism in North America.
Every eye was fixed upon the honoured guest. A few were there who could recall the pride of Lafayette in his American troops, with their helmets and flowing crests and the sabres he himself had brought from France. The banquet, the toasts, the ball, all these have passed into tradition.
The Marquis visited Clark's cabinet of Indian curios.
"I present you this historic cloak of an Indian chief," said the General, offering a robe like a Russian great coat.
In turn, Lafayette presented his mess chest, carried through the Revolution, and placed on the Governor's finger a ring of his hair. Later Clark sent him the live cub of a grizzly bear, that grew to be a wonder in the Jardin des Plantes of Paris.
"And your great brother, George Rogers Clark?" inquired the Marquis.