Lafayette enjoyed his talks with Napoleon, though the latter was often inclined to be domineering. Lord Cornwallis came to Paris in 1802 to conclude the Treaty of Amiens between France and England, and Lafayette met his old opponent at dinner at the house of Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon. The next time Napoleon and Lafayette met the former said, “I warn you that Lord Cornwallis gives out that you are not cured yet.”
“Of what?” answered Lafayette. “Is it of loving liberty? What could have disgusted me with it? The extravagances and crimes of the tyranny of the Terror? They only make me hate still more every arbitrary system, and attach me more and more to my principles.”
Napoleon said seriously, “I should tell you, General Lafayette, and I see with regret, that by your manner of expressing yourself on the acts of this government you give to its enemies the weight of your name.”
“What better can I do?” asked Lafayette. “I live in retirement in the country, I avoid occasions for speaking; but whenever any one comes to ask me whether your system is conformant to my ideas of liberty, I shall answer that it is not; for, General, I certainly wish to be prudent, but I shall not be false.”
“What do you mean,” said Napoleon, “with your arbitrary system? Yours was not so, I admit; but you had against your adversaries the resource of riots.... I observed you carefully.... You had to get up riots.”
“If you call the national insurrection of July, 1789, a riot,” Lafayette answered, “I lay claim to that one; but after that period I wanted no more. I have repressed many; many were gotten up against me; and, since you appeal to my experience regarding them, I shall say that in the course of the Revolution I saw no injustice, no deviation from liberty, which did not injure the Revolution itself.”
Napoleon ended the conversation by saying, “After all, I have spoken to you as the head of the government, and in this character I have cause to complain of you; but as an individual, I should be content, for in all that I hear of you, I have recognized that, in spite of your severity toward the acts of the government, there has always been on your part personal good-will toward myself.”
And this in truth expressed Lafayette’s attitude toward Napoleon, admiration and friendship for the General, but opposition to the growing love of power of the First Consul.
That love of power soon made itself manifest in Napoleon’s election to the new office of “Consul for life.” Meantime Lafayette was busy cultivating his farm, work which he greatly enjoyed. And to Lagrange came many distinguished English and American visitors, eager to meet the owner and hear him tell of his adventurous career on two continents.
The United States treated him well. While he was still in prison at Olmutz he was placed on the army list at full pay. Congress voted to him more than eleven thousand acres on the banks of the Ohio, and when the great territory of Louisiana was acquired a tract near the city of New Orleans was set aside for him and he was informed that the government of Louisiana was destined for him. But Madame Lafayette’s health had been delicate ever since those trying days in Austria, and that, combined with Lafayette’s own feeling that he ought to remain in France, led him to decline the eager invitations that were sent him to settle in America.