The excess of sentiment of Madame de La Fayette for her husband at this time, was such that she suffered intensely in his presence. She endeavored to conceal her passion for him, and trembled lest she might seem importunate, and weary him. Some years after, she confessed to M. de La Fayette this passionate attraction for him which she had so resisted; "but," she added gently, "you need not be dissatisfied with what is left."
We, who have only known M. de La Fayette soured and old, and do not feel well disposed toward him, because, under the restoration, he shadowed his glory as liberator of two worlds by intrigues with secret societies; we find it difficult to imagine him so charming, "carrying away every heart." But it was even so; and, at the same time that popular favor rendered him so powerful among the multitude, the most beautiful, the proudest, the most brilliant ladies of the court, were madly in love with him.
But we are not writing a biography of M. de La Fayette, and it will be understood that, in an article on the saintly companion of his life, we would not wish any controversy on so illustrious a person, and for whom, with some reservation, we profess great and sincere respect. We will not speak, then, of the events of the revolution, in which he played so prominent a part, only inasmuch as our heroine was mingled with and took part in them.
The abolition of the slave-trade was one of the philanthropic preoccupations of M. de La Fayette. He bought a plantation at Cayenne, la belle Gabrielle, in order to give an example of a gradual enfranchisement of the slaves, and referred to the active charity of his wife the details of his enterprise. With this view, she kept up a correspondence with the priests of the seminary du Saint-Esprit, who had a house at Cayenne. If circumstances did not permit the realization of her hopes, at least she had the consolation of knowing that, thanks to the religious instruction given to the blacks on this plantation, they were guilty of less horrors than at any other point in the colonies.
We must recognize here, too, and to its eternal honor, that America has always been the portion of the globe where liberty of conscience, loudly proclaimed, has never ceased to be practised. It was not so in old Europe and in France before 1789, so the contrast presented by this free state of things, and the numerous vexations to which the different religions were exposed with us, could not but forcibly strike M. de La Fayette on his return. After a journey to Nimes, where he studied more closely the situation of the Protestants, he was able to present, with full knowledge of the case, a proposition to the Assembly of the Notables in 1787, demanding their restoration to the civil rights of which they had been despoiled.
I love to remember that an eminent Catholic clergyman, Mgr. Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, and later, Cardinal, warmly supported the proposition for this act of justice. Madame de La Fayette shared these sentiments, and received with lively interest the Protestant ministers whom the result of the affair attracted around her husband. A zealous child of the Catholic Church, she detested the persecutions that could only alienate her children, and which appeared to her so opposed to the spirit of Christianity.
After 1783, M. de La Fayette, whose family had increased considerably, and whose political importance had reached its height, left the hotel de Noailles, to establish himself in his own house, rue de Bourbon, now the rue de Lille. And there the ever-increasing wave of the revolutionary movement, that was never able to overcome the virtue and brightness of a king, the most estimable as a man of any who ever wore a crown, found our heroine. The high position of M. de La Fayette, deputy of the nobility, member of the Constitutional Assembly, and commander-in-chief of the Parisian National Guard, imposed obligations on him in which his wife never repudiated her part. She was seen to accept the successive demands of each of the districts of Paris, to the number of sixty; to preside at the blessing of flags and other patriotic demonstrations. The general kept open house, and did its honors in a manner to charm his numerous guests.
"'But, says her daughter, Madame de Lasteyrie, initiated into her most secret thoughts, 'what she suffered in the depths of her own heart, only those who heard her speak, can tell. She saw my father at the head of a revolution of which it was impossible to foretell the end. Every evil, every disorder, was judged by her with a complete lack of illusion in her own cause; yet she was so sustained by the principles of her husband, and so convinced of the good he could do, and the evil he might avert, that she bore with incredible strength the continual dangers to which she was exposed. Never, said she to us, did I see him go out during this time, without thinking that I heard his last adieu. No one was more terrified than she by the dangers of those she loved; but in these times, she rose above herself, and in her devotion to my father, hoped he could prevent the increasing crime.'"