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.