“No citizen of a foreign country has ever had so many and such warm admirers in America, nor does any statesman in France appear to have ever possessed uninterruptedly for so many years so large a measure of popular influence and respect. He had what Jefferson called a ‘canine appetite’ for popularity and fame, but in him the appetite only seemed to make him more anxious to merit the fame which he enjoyed. He was brave even to rashness; his life was one of constant personal peril, and yet he never shrank from any danger or responsibility if he saw the way open to spare life or suffering, to protect the defenceless, to sustain the law and preserve order.”
Hon. Chauncey Depew thus concisely comments upon La Fayette’s influence in France:—
“While the principles of the American Devolution were fermenting in France, La Fayette, the hero and favorite of the hour, was an honored guest at royal tables and royal camps. The proud Spaniard and the Great Frederick of Germany alike welcomed him, and everywhere he announced his faith in government founded on the American idea. The financial crisis in the affairs of King Louis on the one hand, and the rising tide of the popular passion on the other, compelled the summons of the Assembly of Notables at Versailles. All the great officers of state, the aristocracy, the titled clergy, the royal princes, were there, but no representative of the people. La Fayette spoke for them, and, fearless of the efforts of the brother of the king to put him down, he demanded religious toleration, equal taxes, just and equal administration of the laws, and the reduction of royal expenditures to fixed and reasonable limits. This overturned the whole feudal fabric which had been in course of construction for a thousand years. To make effectual and permanent this tremendous stride toward the American experiment, he paralyzed the court and cabinet by the call for a national assembly—an assembly of the people. Through that assembly he carried a declaration of rights, founded upon the natural liberties of man, a concession of popular privilege never before secured in the modern history of Europe; and, going as far as he believed the times would admit toward his idea of an American republic, he builded upon the ruins of absolutism a constitutional monarchy.
“But French democracy had not been trained and educated in the schools of the Puritan or the colonist. Ages of tyranny, of suppression, repression, and torture had developed the tiger and dwarfed the man. Democracy had not learned the first rudiments of liberty,—self-restraint and self-government. It beheaded king and queen; it drenched the land with the blood of the noblest and best; in its indiscriminate frenzy and madness it spared neither age nor sex, virtue nor merit, and drove its benefactor, because he denounced its excesses and tried to stem them, into exile and the dungeon of Olmütz. Thus ended in the horrors of the French Revolution La Fayette’s first fight for liberty at home. After five years of untold sufferings, spurning release at the price of his allegiance to monarchy, holding with sublime faith, amidst the most disheartening and discouraging surroundings, to the principles of freedom for all, he was released by the sword of Napoleon Bonaparte, to find that the untamed ferocity of the Revolution had been trained to the service of the most brilliant, captivating, and resistless of military despotisms by the mighty genius of the great Dictator. He only was neither dazzled nor dismayed, and when he had rejected every offer of recognition and honor, Napoleon said: ‘La Fayette alone in France holds fast to his original ideas of liberty. Though tranquil now, he will reappear if occasion offers.’ Against the first consulate of Bonaparte he voted, ‘No, unless with guaranties of freedom.’ When Europe lay helpless at the feet of the conqueror, and, in the frenzy of military glory, France neither saw nor felt the chains he was forging upon her, La Fayette, from his retirement of La Grange, plead with the Emperor for republican principles, holding up to him the retributions always meted out to tyrants, and the pure, undying fame of the immortal few who patriotically decide, when upon them alone rests the awful verdict, whether they shall be the enslavers or the saviors of their country.
“The sun of Austerlitz set in blood at Waterloo. The swords of allied kings placed the Bourbon once more on the throne of France. In the popular tempest of July, the nation rose against the intolerable tyranny of the king, and, calling upon this unfaltering friend of liberty, said with one voice: ‘You alone can save France from despotism on the one hand, and the orgies of the Jacobin mob on the other; take absolute power; be marshal, general, dictator if you will.’ But in assuming command of the National Guard, the old soldier and patriot answered, amidst the hail of shot and shell, ‘Liberty shall triumph, or we all perish together.’ He dethroned and drove out Charles X., and France, contented with any destiny he might accord to her, with unquestioning faith left her future in his hands. He knew that the French people were not yet ready to take and faithfully keep American liberty. He believed that in the school of constitutional government they would rapidly learn, and, in the fulness of time adopt its principles, and he gave them a king who was the popular choice, and surrounded him with the restraints of charter and an assembly of the people.”
M. Francis Hervé, editor of Madame Tussaud’s “Memoirs of the French Revolution,” gives the following account of an interview with La Fayette:—
“During an interesting conversation which took place at the apartments of the editor at Paris, a few months prior to the death of La Fayette, respecting the different forms of government, he observed that the approaches of liberty ought always to be very gradual, and not conferred at once upon those who had lived in a state of slavery under an arbitrary power, and without the benefit of education; which opinion was founded upon the long experience of a life which had been ever devoted to that subject. Although bent with age, the same philanthropy and energetic love of freedom glowed within him as that which characterized his youth, but tempered with maturer judgment; hence, when the Revolution of the three days took place, and he was called upon as the arbiter of France respecting her government, he decided for monarchy, with liberal institutions; but observed that, although a pledge was given for the promotion of the latter, yet it had never been redeemed; and he sighed as he made that declaration.”
La Fayette passed his winters in Paris, and at all seasons of the year, when he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he resided in the city during the sessions. He there occupied a suite of apartments in a large hotel No. 6 Rue d’Anjou, St. Honoré.
La Fayette’s occupations in Paris were extremely numerous. Besides his duties as a deputy, which he performed with scrupulous exactness, he was obliged to attend public meetings, committees, relief societies, boards of instruction, and constant social engagements. Notwithstanding his multifarious avocations he found time to devote to his domestic affairs and to his personal study. He was fond of society, and was a delightful and brilliant conversationalist.
A political duel which terminated in the death of M. Dulong, one of La Fayette’s fellow-deputies, was a severe blow to the marquis. Notwithstanding his age, La Fayette followed the body of his friend to the grave on foot, and when he returned home he was soon taken violently ill. Measures were taken which gave him partial relief, but he never entirely rallied from this attack. His health became so much improved, however, that he was allowed to receive the visits of his friends, who showed their sympathy and regard by the most constant attentions.