GENERAL LAFAYETTE.
Escaping from all these good people so keenly and cordially enjoyed by the warm-hearted marquis, he found Betty Washington's son to act as sponsor and guide—lest he should have been forgotten!—to visit the mother of his friend. He wished to pay his parting respects and to ask her blessing.
"Accompanied by her grandson," says Mr. Custis, "he approached the house; when the young gentleman observed, 'There, sir, is my grandmother.' Lafayette beheld, working in the garden, clad in domestic-made clothes, and her gray head covered in a plain straw hat, the mother of his hero! The lady saluted him kindly, observing, 'Ah, Marquis! you see an old woman; but come, I can make you welcome to my poor dwelling, without the parade of changing my dress.'
"The Marquis spoke of the happy effects of the Revolution, and the goodly prospect which opened upon independent America; stated his speedy departure for his native land; paid the tribute of his heart, his love and admiration of her illustrious son. To the encomiums which he had lavished upon his hero and paternal chief, the matron replied in her accustomed words, 'I am not surprised at what George has done, for he was always a very good boy.'
"In her latter days, the mother often spoke of 'her own good boy,' of the merits of his early life, of his love and dutifulness to herself; but of the deliverer of his country, the chief magistrate of the great republic, she never spoke. Call you this insensibility? or want of ambition? Oh, no! her ambition had been gratified to overflowing. She had taught him to be good; that he became great when the opportunity presented, was a consequence, not a cause."
Would that we could record naught but reward—long life, honor, and happiness—to every one of our brave allies who came to us in our extremity. But, alas! Fortune held in her closed hand these gifts for some—for others disgrace, the dungeon, the guillotine!
Louis XVI was overjoyed at the éclat won by the French arms in America. When Rochambeau presented himself at court the young king received him graciously, and said to him, "I have read in the Commentaries of Cæsar that a small army, commanded by a great general, can achieve wonders, and you are a proof of it."
Lafayette threw himself with ardor into the stirring military life of his own country, and came back to us in 1824 to find his path strewn with flowers by Daughters of the American Revolution; and Daughters of the American Revolution but a few months ago crowned his statue with the same laurels with which they crowned the adored Washington!