"The night is far advanced, the heat intense, and I am devoured with gnats, but the best of countries have their inconveniences. Adieu, my love, adieu."
A very good picture that of customs and habits which would have been to the lasting advantage of America to continue!
The letters of Lafayette grew more and more homesick and Adrienne's feelings were like a harp with its strings attuned to respond to his every emotion.
From Petersburg, Va., on July 17, 1777, he writes:
"I have received no news of you, and my impatience to hear from you cannot be compared to any other earthly feeling. . . . You must have learned the particulars of the commencement of my journey. You know that I set out in a brilliant manner in a carriage, and I must now tell you that we are all on horseback, having broken the carriage after my usual praiseworthy custom, and I hope soon to write you that we have arrived at Philadelphia on foot! . . ."
A few days later he says:
"I am each day more miserable, from having quitted you, my dearest love. . . . I would give at this moment half of my existence for the pleasure of embracing you again, and telling you with my own lips how I love you. . . . Oh, if you knew how I sigh to see you, how I suffer at being separated from you and all that my heart has been called on to endure, you would think me somewhat worthy of your love."
Poor, lonely, young couple—each was suffering in a different way from the separation, but Adrienne's misery was the hardest to bear, for not only had she lost the little daughter who had been her greatest comfort since the departure of her husband for America, but she now had a shock, for in her husband's letter of the 12th of September, after the battle of Brandywine, he wrote:
"Our Americans after having stood their ground for some time ended at last by being routed; whilst endeavouring to rally them, the English honoured me with a musket ball, which slightly wounded me in the leg, but it is a trifle, and I have escaped with the obligation of lying on my back for some time, which puts me much out of humour. I hope that you will feel no anxiety, this event ought, on the contrary, rather to reassure you, since I am incapacitated from appearing on the field for some time. I have resolved to take good care of myself, be convinced of this, my dearest love."
Notwithstanding the cheerful tenor of this letter, Adrienne was not able to eat or sleep after its arrival, until in a second letter he again assured her of the slightness of his injury, and added: