Friends wearied both France and foreign powers with solicitations for the release of General de la Fayette. Fox painted the miseries endured at Olmutz in eloquent terms before a British House of Commons; but it was not until October, 1797, that the prison gates opened at length, through Bonaparte's intervention.
The name she bore often proved detrimental to her, but Madame de la Fayette gloried in it. With Robespierre's fall all prisoners in France were set at liberty. General de la Fayette, however, was accused of having betrayed the revolution because he had refused to become privy to its crimes, and his wife was therefore detained. Interrogated by Legendre, who told her how much he detested the very name of la Fayette, she boldly expressed her readiness to defend him and it against whatsoever accuser. Legendre remanded her to prison "for insolence."
This devoted love for husband and children did not suffice to fill her heart. It was burning also with other affections. To Madame de la Fayette we owe a touching life of the Duchesse d'Ayen, written while at Olmutz, on the margin of a stray volume of Buffon, with a broken toothpick for her pen and a piece of Chinese ink. When told of the tragic fate that had overtaken her relatives, she could not believe it at first; especially it seemed impossible that men could have been so barbarous to her "angelic sister." On recovering a little from this overwhelming sorrow, she wrote to her children:
"I thank God for having preserved to me life and reason, and do not regret your absence at such a moment. He kept me from revolt against him; but I could not long have borne the semblance of any human consolation. To follow in the track of such dear footsteps would have sweetened the last pangs for me."
In the prisons of the revolution her sole thought was how to relieve the wants and sufferings of those around. With her cousin, the Duchesse de Duras, at Plessis, she was constantly interceding for the sick and poor among their fellow captives, and this at a time when a chance word sufficed for death, as sixty victims chosen by caprice or at hazard were regularly dragged forth each day for execution. Her spirit never forsook her under trying circumstances, and she often showed wonderful presence of mind. Once she pleaded her own cause before the tribunal of Puy, and on several occasions harangued the people. Her language at these times was always nobly firm, and sometimes proud even to haughtiness. In a letter addressed to Brissot, after asking for liberty, or at least the favor of remaining a prisoner on parole, which the whole village of Chavaniac volunteered to guarantee, she concludes by saying, "I consent to owe you this service." Her letters to the two ministers, Roland and Servan, or to foreign princes on behalf of her husband, are no less elevated in tone. She never stoops to flatter. No wonder that she exercised a species of fascination over all those who approached her; with whatever feelings the acquaintance began, it was impossible to know and not to love her.
In all her sorrows, ardent faith sustained her. When danger again threatened at Paris, she writes to Madame de Montagu: "We mast abandon ourselves wholly to God in this critical hour. Let us live like Abraham, ready to start whenever God calls, and to go wheresoever he appoints." When she felt her end approaching, once more she repeated aloud that canticle of Tobias, singing which she had, years before, entered the fortress of Olmutz. True in death to her character through life, her heart was inflamed with celestial desires, and still overflowing with human affection. Drawing all her loved ones round her, she gave them a last blessing, and gently expired, holding her husband's hands within her own.
Of four daughters of the Duc d'Ayen, Madame de Grammont was the least attractive. Her person was small, her appearance stiff, her features marked; there was nothing soft about her look or manner. Her virtue was of a stern kind; she had schooled herself into a certain absence of feeling, neither right nor lovable; but fortunately her actions often contradicted her professions. Thus her kindness never failed, and her charity to the poor was boundless. There was a contradiction too between what she said and what she wrote—her speeches are always more or less stern, while her letters frequently betray deep affection; like a person who speaks from principle, but dares to let herself out on paper, sure of restraining emotion when necessary. Sacrifice was the prominent feature of her piety; duty dictated her every sentiment.
Eight out of her nine children she saw carried to their graves in youth, and each time she could say with composure, "The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Writing to Madame de Montagu about a daughter whose end was approaching, she uses these words: "As life ebbs away, her peace and self-possession are perfect. . . . . . I do not despair of helping her passage into the bosom of God after having erst borne her in my own; and it is sweet to make her repeat, 'I was cast into thy arms, O Lord, from the beginning: thou art my God, even from my mother's womb.'" It was not in her character to disclose the struggle of natural feeling that was going on in her heart at the time that she was writing words like these.
Once Madame de Grammont writes to her sister: "The expectation, experience, and long continuance of misfortune have at length made me impassible. " "And I," adds Madame de Montagu, commenting on the word in [{260}] her journal, "am still a reed shaken by every breath." The two phrases aptly characterize each sister.