XXIX
PRESIDENT—OR KING-MAKER?
The ocean was no kinder than usual to Lafayette on his homeward voyage and the reception he met in Havre lacked enthusiasm. Louis XVIII, who was king when he went away, had died during his absence and another brother of the ill-fated Louis XVI had mounted the throne, with the title of Charles X. He was no other than the Comte d'Artois who had presided over Lafayette's section in the Assembly of Notables and had been blind to his presence when the two reached the same inn at the same moment in Austria. His ministers were no more friendly to liberals of Lafayette's way of thinking than those of his brothers had been; but the liberals of France showed a distinct desire to notice the home-coming of Lafayette. Police could and did disperse young men on horseback who gathered under his windows at the inn in Rouen for a serenade; but there were other ways of paying respect. One took the form of a contest of poets "to celebrate a voyage which history will place among the great events of the century." There were eighty-three contestants, and Béranger, who had already paid his tribute, acted as a judge. In due time the victor was ceremoniously given a prize. Lafayette must have been reminded of the burst of rhyme in America quite as much by contrast as by similarity.
His children came to meet him, which more than compensated for official neglect; and the welcome of several hundred neighbors when he reached La Grange convinced him that his local popularity was not impaired. On the whole he had reason to be well content. He brought home ruddy health, knowledge of the love in which he was held by twelve million warm-hearted Americans, and, a lesser consideration, doubtless, but one for which to be properly grateful, the prospect of speedily rebuilding the family fortunes. The grant of land voted by Congress was for thirty-six sections of six hundred and forty acres each, "east of and adjoining the city of Tallahassee in Leon County, Florida." So far as the writer has been able to learn, it never greatly benefited him or his heirs; but that fact was mercifully hidden in the future. In addition to the land there was a goodly sum of money to his credit in a Philadelphia bank.
He had stood the fatigues of the trip wonderfully. His cousin who went to see him soon after his return marveled to find him "big, fat, fresh, and joyous," showing not the least ill effects from having "gone several months practically without sleep, in addition to talking, writing, traveling, and drinking for all he was worth (pour tout de bon) ten hours out of the twenty-four." And he brought home from across the sea another gift: an ease in public speaking which astonished the friends who remembered the impatient scorn his silences roused in Marie Antoinette and how seldom he made speeches in the Assembly of Notables. During his command of the National Guard of Paris his utterances had of necessity been more frequent and more emphatic, but they betrayed none of the pleasure in addressing audiences that he now evidently felt. It was as though the friendliness of the American people had opened for him a new and delightful channel through which he could express his good will toward all the world. His voice lent itself well to public speaking; it could be soft or sonorous by turns, and he had the art of using plain and simple words. His physician, Doctor Cloquet, tells how some workmen were seen puzzling over a newspaper and criticizing it rather severely until they came to a speech by Lafayette. "Good!" said the reader, his face clearing. "At least we can understand what this man says. He speaks French."
Delighting workmen was not a gift to ingratiate him with a Bourbon king whose government was growing less popular every day. Lafayette retired to La Grange among its vineyards and orchards in the flat region of La Brie and took up life there again; cultivating his estate; carrying on an immense correspondence in that small, well-formed script of his which is yet so difficult to read; rejoicing in his family and receiving many visitors. It was a cosmopolitan procession that made its way up the Rozoy road to the château whose Norman towers had been old before the discovery of the New World. Some in that procession were old friends, members of the French nobility, who came in spite of Lafayette's politics; others were complete strangers drawn to him from distant parts of the earth by these same opinions. French, English, Americans, Austrians, Algerian sheiks, black men from the West Indies—all were welcome.
In his study, an upper room in one of his five towers, he was literally in the center of his world. From a window overlooking the farm-yard he could direct the laborers by megaphone if he did not choose to go down among them. His "speaking-trumpet," as Charles Sumner called it, still lay on his desk when this American made his pious pilgrimage years after Lafayette's death. On the walls of the library and living-room hung relics that brought vividly to mind the history of two continents during momentous years. The American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of Rights hung side by side. A copy in bronze of Houdon's bust of Washington had the place of honor. A portrait of Bailly, a victim of the Revolution, hung over the fireplace in Lafayette's study. There were swords presented by French admirers and gifts from American cities and Indian chiefs. There was one room which was entered only by Lafayette and his children, and that but once a year, on the anniversary of his wife's death. It had been hers and was closed and kept just as she left it.
Her death marked a distinct period in his life. There were those who said that when she died Lafayette lost more than a loved companion; that he lost his conscience. In proof of this they pointed out how in the later years of his life, after her steadying influence was removed, he veered about in the troubled sea of French politics, like a ship without a rudder. It is true only in a superficial sense; but it is true that he was never quite the same after she died.