“‘Really,’ replied he, ‘he ought to be content with the government.’
“The blame of this rupture has often been laid entirely to my charge; but his resolution and his character left me no hope of being useful. As he advanced farther in his fatal course, the rupture was more inevitable. If any one has the desire of tracing for himself the good will of my feelings towards Bonaparte, he has only to search through my correspondence with my friends. It suffices that these letters, written at different times, free me from all reproach of ambition or caprice.
“The foreigners who most desired to see me in office, were not tardy in feeling that I was right. But I will never despair of liberty.
“‘The character of General La Fayette,’ said Klopstock, a little while after my release from Olmütz, ‘prevents him from well knowing his nation; how could he believe them capable of possessing free institutions?’
“His judgment was an error, which the excesses of the Jacobins had but too far scattered. Later, one of his friends, who was also mine, wrote to me thus: ‘Klopstock died with his old attachment for you. We had together a long conversation regarding you, when I made to him my last, visit; he approved of you, and besought me that I should write to you, and salute you most cordially for him. I present to you this last homage, coming, so to speak, from the other world.’
“I was also touched, without doubt, to read in a letter written from Rome (by Madame de Staël): ‘I shall hope always for the human race as long as you exist. I address you this sentiment from the sublime Capitol, and the benedictions of its shades come to you through my voice.’
“To multiply such citations, and to repeat the most flattering opinions from Europe and America, I should have the appearance of giving way to a vanity from which it is easy to defend one’s self after one has acted amidst great circumstances; and particularly, after one has been the butt of some enthusiasm, one feels that there is nothing but a true esteem which is worthy of regard. I have myself said elsewhere, ‘There is, then, some good in my retirement, since it publishes and maintains the idea that liberty is not abandoned without exception and without hope.’”
La Fayette thus describes his meeting with Charles Fox:—
“The Peace d’Amiens brought over a great number of Englishmen. ‘They are all malecontents,’ observed the ambassador Livingston; ‘some have expected to find France wild; they have found her flourishing: the others hoped to see here traces of liberty; all are disappointed.’ I was at Chavaniac when Charles Fox and General Fitzpatrick arrived in Paris. They wished to send for me, as I was one of the principal objects of their visit. I hastened to join them. M. and Madame Fox, Fitzpatrick, MM. John and Trotter, passed several days at La Grange. I met at Paris the Lords Holland and Lauderdale, the new Duke of Bedford, M. Adair, and M. Erskine, whom I pressed in vain to write regarding the jury of England and of France. ‘The first years of the Revolution,’ said they, ‘we had great hopes; but the excesses have ruined the good cause.’
“One day Fox, with his amiable goodness of heart, said to me in the presence of my son, that I should not be too much affected by an unavoidable delay. ‘Liberty will return,’ said he, ‘but not for us; for George, perhaps, and surely for his children.’”