It was certainly not without malice that he seated the young French general at his table between two other guests, Lord Cornwallis and the Duke of York; and in the course of long dinners amused himself by asking Lafayette questions about Washington and the American campaigns. Lafayette answered with his customary ardor, singing praises of his general and even venturing to praise republicanism in a manner that irritated the old monarch.
"Monsieur!" Frederick interrupted him in such a flight. "I once knew a young man who visited countries where liberty and equality reigned. After he got home he took it into his head to establish them in his own country. Do you know what happened?"
"No, Sire."
"He was hanged!" the old man replied, with a sardonic grin. It was plain he liked Lafayette or he would not have troubled to give him the warning.
Lafayette continued his journey to Prague and Vienna and Dresden, where he saw other soldiers put through their drill. Then he returned to Potsdam for the final grand maneuvers under the personal direction of Frederick, but a sudden acute attack of gout racked his kingly old bones, and the exercises which, in his clockwork military system, could no more be postponed than the movements of the planets, were carried out by the heir apparent, to Lafayette's great disappointment. He wrote Washington that the prince was "a good officer, an honest fellow, a man of sense," but that he would never have the talent of his two uncles. As for the Prussian army, it was a wonderful machine, but "if the resources of France, the vivacity of her soldiers, the intelligence of her officers, the national ambition and moral delicacy were applied to a system worked out with equal skill, we would as far excel the Prussians as our army is now inferior to theirs—which is saying a great deal!"
Vive la France! Vivent moral distinctions! He may not have realized it, but Lafayette was all his life more interested in justice than in war.
Almost from the hour of his last return from America the injustice with which French Protestants were treated filled him with indignation. Though not openly persecuted, they were entirely at the mercy of official caprice. Legally their marriages were not valid; they could not make wills; their rights as citizens were attacked on every side. To use Lafayette's expression, they were "stricken with civil death." He became their champion.
Everybody knew that very radical theories had been applauded in France for many years, even by the men who condemned them officially. Dislike of liberal actions, however, was still strong, as Lafayette found when he attempted to help these people. His interest in them was treated as an amiable weakness which might be overlooked in view of his many good qualities, but should on no account be encouraged. "It is a work which requires time and is not without some inconvenience to me, because nobody is willing to give me one word of writing or to uphold me in any way. I must run my chance," he wrote Washington. He did, however, get permission from one of the king's ministers to go to Languedoc, where Protestants were numerous, in order to study their condition and know just what it was he advocated. Evidence that he gathered thus at first hand he used officially two years later before the Assembly of Notables. So his championship of the French Protestants marks the beginning of this new chapter in Lafayette's life, his entrance into French politics.
Outwardly the condition of the country remained much as it had been; but discontent had made rapid progress during the years of Lafayette's stay in America. An answer attributed to the old Maréchal de Richelieu sums up the change. The old reprobate had been ill and Louis XVI, with good intentions, but clumsy cruelty, congratulated him on his recovery. "For," said the king, "you are not young. You have seen three ages." "Rather," growled the duke, "three reigns!" "Well, what do you think of them?" "Sire, under Louis XIV nobody dared say a word; under Louis XV they spoke in whispers; under your Majesty they speak loudly."
This education in discontent had proceeded under three teachers: extravagance, hunger, and the success of America's war of independence. Louis really desired to see his people happy and prosperous. He had made an attempt at reforms, early in his reign, but, having neither a strong will nor a strong mind, it speedily lapsed. Even under his own eyes at Versailles many abuses continued, merely because they had become part of the cumbersome court etiquette which Frederick II had condemned back in the days of Louis's grandfather. Many other abuses had increased without even the pretense of reforming them. There was increased personal extravagance among the well-to-do; increased extortion elsewhere. Tax-collectors were still going about shutting their eyes to the wealth of men who had influence and judging the peasants as coldly as they would judge cattle. In one district they were fat; they must pay a heavier tax. Chicken feathers were blowing about on the ground? That meant the people had poultry to eat; the screw could be given another vigorous turn. Among all classes there seemed to be less and less money to spend. With the exception of a few bankers and merchants, everybody from the king down felt poor. The peasants felt hungry. The poor in cities actually were very hungry; almost all the nobles were deeply in debt. In short, the forces for good and ill which had already honeycombed the kingdom when Lafayette was a boy had continued their work, gnawing upward and downward and through the social fabric until only a very thin and brittle shell remained. And, as the Maréchal de Richelieu pointedly reminded his weak king, people were no longer afraid to talk aloud about these things.