The Boys Life of Lafayette 29

The Boys Life of Lafayette 29

His master had need of all Felix's cheer to help him bear up against

the anxiety that grew with each bit of news from France, and grew

greater still because of the absence of news from those he loved [Pg

236]best. For the first seven months he heard not a word from wife and

children, though soon after his capture he learned about the early days

of September in Paris, when the barriers had been closed and houses

were searched and prisons "purged" of those suspected of sympathy with

the aristocracy. Since then he had heard from his wife; but he had

also learned of the trial and death of the king; and rumors had come

to him of the Terror. Adrienne's steadfastness had been demonstrated

to him through all the years of their married life. Where principle

was involved he knew she would not falter; and he had little hope that

she could have escaped imprisonment or a worse fate. He had heard

absolutely nothing from her now for eighteen months. His captivity has

been called "a night five years long," and this was its darkest hour.

 

Then one day, without the least previous warning, the bolts and bars

of his cell creaked at an unusual hour; they were pushed back--and he

looked into the faces of his wife and daughters. The authorities broke

in upon the first instant of incredulous recognition to search their

new charges; possessed themselves of their purses and the three silver

forks in their modest luggage, and disappeared. The complaining bolts

slid into place once more and a new prison routine began, difficult to

bear in spite of the companionship, when he saw unnecessary hardships

press cruelly upon these devoted women. Bit by bit he learned what had

happened in the outside world: events of national importance of which

[Pg 237]he had not heard in his dungeon, and also little incidents that

touched only his personal history; for instance, the ceremonies with

which the Commune publicly broke the mold for the Lafayette medal, and

how the mob had howled around his Paris house, clamoring to tear it

down and raise a "column of infamy" in its place. He forbore to ask

questions at first, knowing how tragic the tale must be, and it was

only after the girls had been led away that first night and locked into

the cell where they were to sleep that he learned of the grief that had

come to Adrienne about a week before the Terror came to an end--the

execution on a single day of her mother, her grandmother, and her

beloved sister Louise.

 

In time he learned all the details of her own story: the months she

had been under parole at Chavaniac, where through the kind offices of

Gouverneur Morris she received at last the letter from her husband

telling her that he was well. Her one desire had been to join him, but

there was the old aunt to be provided for, and there were also pressing

debts to settle; a difficult matter after Lafayette's property was

confiscated and sold. Mr. Morris lent her the necessary money, assuring

her that if she could not repay it Americans would willingly assume it

as part of the far larger debt their country owed her husband.

 

She asked to be released from her parole in order to go into Germany

to share his prison. Instead she had been cast into prison on her

own account. The children's tutor, M. de Frestel, who had been their

father's tutor before them, conspired with the servants and sold their

[Pg 238]bits of valuables that she might make the journey to prison

in greater comfort. He contrived, too, that the mother might see her

children before she was taken off to Paris, and she made them promise,

in the event of her death, to make every effort to rejoin their father.

In Paris she lived through many months of prison horror, confined part

of the time in the old Collège Du Plessis where Lafayette had spent his

boyhood, seeing every morning victims carried forth to their death and

expecting every day to be ordered to mount into the tumbrels with them.

Had she known it, she was inquired for every morning at the prison door

by a faithful maidservant, who in this way kept her children informed

of her fate. George was in England with his tutor. At Chavaniac the

little girls were being fed by the peasants, as was the old aunt, for

the manor-house had been sold and the old lady had been allowed to buy

back literally nothing except her own bed.

 

At last Robespierre himself died under the guillotine and toward the

end of September, 1794, a less bloodthirsty committee visited the

prisons to decide the fate of their inmates. Adrienne Lafayette was the

last to be examined at Du Plessis. Her husband was so hated that no

one dared speak her name. She pronounced it clearly and proudly as she

had spoken and written it ever since misfortune came upon her. It was

decided that the wife of so great a criminal must be judged by higher

authority; meanwhile she was to be kept under lock and key. James

Monroe, who was now American minister to Paris, interceded for her,

but she was only transferred to another prison. Here a worthy priest,

[Pg 239]disguised as a carpenter, came to her to tell her how on a day

in July the three women dearest to her had been beheaded, and how he,

running beside the tumbrel through the storm that drenched them on

their way to execution, had been able, at no small risk to himself, to

offer them secretly the consolations of religion.

 

Finally in January, 1795, largely through the efforts of Mr. Monroe,

she was released. Her first care was to make a visit of thanks to Mr.

Monroe and to ask him to continue his kindness by obtaining a passport

for herself and her girls so that they might seek out her husband.

George was to be sent to America, for she felt sure that his father, if

still alive, would desire him to be there for a time under the care of

Washington, and, if he had perished in prison, would have wished his

son to grow up an American citizen.

 

Getting the passport proved a long and difficult undertaking. When

issued it was to permit Madame Motier of Hartford, Connecticut, and

her two daughters to return to America. It was necessary to begin the

journey in accordance with this, and they embarked at Dunkirk on a

small American vessel bound for Hamburg. There they left the ship and

went to Vienna on another passport, but still as the American family

named Motier. In Vienna the American family hid itself very effectively

through the help of old friends, and Adrienne contrived to be received

by the emperor himself, quite unknown to his ministers. His manner to

her and her girls was so gracious that she came away "in an ecstasy of

joy," though he told her he could not release the prisoner. She [Pg

240]was so sure her husband was well treated and so jubilant over the

emperor's permission to write directly to him if she had reason to

complain, that she was not at all cast down by the warnings and evident

unfriendliness of the prime minister and the minister of war with whom

she next sought interviews.

 

Leaving Vienna by carriage, she and her daughters traveled all one

day and part of the next northward into the rugged Carpathian country

before an interested postboy pointed out the steeples and towers of

Olmütz. Once in the town, they drove straight to the house of the

commandant, who took good care not to expose his heart to pity by

seeing these women, but sent the officer in charge of the prison to

open its doors and admit them to its cold welcome.

 

The room in which they found Lafayette did well enough in point of

size and of furnishings. It was a vaulted stone chamber facing south,

twenty-four feet long, fifteen wide, and twelve high. Light entered

by means of a fairly large window shut at the top with a padlock, but

which could be opened at the bottom, where it was protected by a double

iron grating. The furnishings consisted of a bed, a table, chairs, a

chest of drawers, and a stove; and this room opened into another of

equal size which served as an antechamber. The vileness consisted in

the sights and smells outside the window and the dirt within.

 

The routine that began when the door of this room opened so

unexpectedly to admit Lafayette's wife and daughters continued for

almost two years. Madame Lafayette described it in a letter to her [Pg

241]aunt, Madame de Tessé, an exile in Holstein, with whom she and her

girls spent a few days after leaving the ship at Hamburg. "At last,

my dear aunt, I can write you secretly. Friends risk their liberty,

their life, to transmit our letters and will charge themselves with

this one for you.... Thanks to your good advice, dear aunt, I took the

sole means of reaching here. If I had been announced I would never

have succeeded in entering the domains of the emperor.... Do you wish

details of our present life? They bring our breakfast at eight o'clock

in the morning, after which I am locked with the girls until noon. We

are reunited for dinner, and though our jailers enter twice to remove

the dishes and bring in our supper, we remain together until they

come at eight o'clock to take my daughters back to their cage. The

keys are carried each time to the commandant and shut up with absurd

precautions. They pay, with my money, the expenses of all three, and we

have enough to eat, but it is inexpressibly dirty.

 

"The physician, who does not understand a word of French, is brought

to us by an officer when we have need of him. We like him. M. de

Lafayette, in the presence of the officer, who understands Latin,

speaks with him in that language and translates for us. When this

officer, a huge corporal of a jailer, who does not dare to speak to

us himself without witnesses, comes with his great trousseau of keys

in his hand to unpadlock our doors, while the whole guard is drawn up

outside in the corridor and the entrance to our rooms is half opened

[Pg 242]by two sentinels, you would laugh to see our two girls, one

blushing to her ears, the other with a manner now proud, now comic,

passing under their crossed sabers; after which the doors of our cells

at once close. What is not pleasant is that the little court on the

same level with the corridor is the scene of frequent punishment of the

soldiers, who are there beaten with whips, and we hear the horrible

music. It is a great cause of thankfulness to us that our children up

to the present time have borne up well under this unhealthy regime. As

for myself, I admit that my health is not good."

 

It was so far from good that she asked leave to go to Vienna for a

week for expert medical advice, but was told, after waiting long for

an answer of any kind, that she had voluntarily put herself under the

conditions to which her husband was subject, and that if she left

Olmütz she could not return. "You know already that the idea of leaving

M. de Lafayette could not be entertained by any one of us. The good we

do him is not confined to the mere pleasure of seeing us. His health

has been really better since we arrived. You know the influence of

moral affections upon him, and however strong his character, I cannot

conceive that it could resist so many tortures. His excessive thinness

and his wasting away have remained at the same point since our arrival,

but his guardians and he assure me that it is nothing compared to the

horrible state he was in a year ago. One cannot spend four years in

such captivity without serious consequences. I have not been able to

see Messrs. Maubourg and Pusy, or even to hear their voices. Judging

[Pg 243]from the number of years with which their so-called guardians

credit them, they must have aged frightfully. Their sufferings here

are all the harder for us to bear because these two loyal and generous

friends of M. de Lafayette have never for an instant permitted their