The Boys Life of Lafayette 34

The Boys Life of Lafayette 34

He had stood the fatigues of the trip wonderfully. His cousin who

went to see him soon after his return marveled to find him "big, fat,

fresh, and joyous," showing not the least ill effects from having "gone

several months practically without sleep, in addition to talking,

writing, traveling, and drinking for all he was worth (_pour tout de

bon_) ten hours out of the twenty-four." And he brought home from

[Pg 278]across the sea another gift: an ease in public speaking which

astonished the friends who remembered the impatient scorn his silences

roused in Marie Antoinette and how seldom he made speeches in the

Assembly of Notables. During his command of the National Guard of Paris

his utterances had of necessity been more frequent and more emphatic,

but they betrayed none of the pleasure in addressing audiences that he

now evidently felt. It was as though the friendliness of the American

people had opened for him a new and delightful channel through which he

could express his good will toward all the world. His voice lent itself

well to public speaking; it could be soft or sonorous by turns, and

he had the art of using plain and simple words. His physician, Doctor

Cloquet, tells how some workmen were seen puzzling over a newspaper

and criticizing it rather severely until they came to a speech by

Lafayette. "Good!" said the reader, his face clearing. "At least we can

understand what this man says. He speaks French."

 

Delighting workmen was not a gift to ingratiate him with a Bourbon

king whose government was growing less popular every day. Lafayette

retired to La Grange among its vineyards and orchards in the flat

region of La Brie and took up life there again; cultivating his estate;

carrying on an immense correspondence in that small, well-formed script

of his which is yet so difficult to read; rejoicing in his family

and receiving many visitors. It was a cosmopolitan procession that

made its way up the Rozoy road to the château whose Norman towers had

[Pg 279]been old before the discovery of the New World. Some in that

procession were old friends, members of the French nobility, who came

in spite of Lafayette's politics; others were complete strangers drawn

to him from distant parts of the earth by these same opinions. French,

English, Americans, Austrians, Algerian sheiks, black men from the West

Indies--all were welcome.

 

In his study, an upper room in one of his five towers, he was literally

in the center of his world. From a window overlooking the farm-yard he

could direct the laborers by megaphone if he did not choose to go down

among them. His "speaking-trumpet," as Charles Sumner called it, still

lay on his desk when this American made his pious pilgrimage years

after Lafayette's death. On the walls of the library and living-room

hung relics that brought vividly to mind the history of two continents

during momentous years. The American Declaration of Independence and

the French Declaration of Rights hung side by side. A copy in bronze

of Houdon's bust of Washington had the place of honor. A portrait

of Bailly, a victim of the Revolution, hung over the fireplace in

Lafayette's study. There were swords presented by French admirers and

gifts from American cities and Indian chiefs. There was one room which

was entered only by Lafayette and his children, and that but once a

year, on the anniversary of his wife's death. It had been hers and was

closed and kept just as she left it.

 

Her death marked a distinct period in his life. There were those who

said that when she died Lafayette lost more than a loved companion;

[Pg 280]that he lost his conscience. In proof of this they pointed out

how in the later years of his life, after her steadying influence was

removed, he veered about in the troubled sea of French politics, like a

ship without a rudder. It is true only in a superficial sense; but it

is true that he was never quite the same after she died.

 

For seven years immediately after this loss he took no active part in

public affairs; partly because of his private sorrow, partly because

of his opposition to the emperor. He had been disappointed in Napoleon

and the latter distrusted him. "All the world is reformed," Napoleon

grumbled, "with one exception. That is Lafayette. He has not receded

from his position by so much as a hair's breadth. He is quiet now, but

I tell you he is ready to begin all over again." George and Lafayette's

son-in-law suffered from this displeasure in their army careers.

"These Lafayettes cross my path everywhere!" Napoleon is said to have

exclaimed when he found the names of the young men on an army list

submitted for promotion, and promptly scratched them off.

 

Then fortune began to go against the emperor and invading armies came

marching into France. Lafayette offered his sword and his experience

to his country, but the advice he gave appeared too dangerous and

revolutionary. What he desired was to force the abdication of Napoleon

at that time. He was in Paris on March 31, 1814, when foreign soldiers

entered the city. Powerless to do anything except grieve, he shut

himself up in his room. Napoleon retired to Elba and the brother of

[Pg 281]Louis XVI was summoned to take the title of Louis XVIII.

This was the prince Lafayette had intentionally offended when he was

scarcely more than a boy.

 

After he was made king, however, Lafayette wrote him a note of

congratulation and appeared in uniform at his first royal audience

wearing the white cockade. That certainly seemed like a change of

front, but Lafayette thought it a necessity. "It had to be Napoleon

or the Bourbons," he wrote Jefferson. "These are the only possible

alternatives in a country where the idea of republican executive power

is regarded as a synonym for excesses committed in its name." He

accepted the government of Louis XVIII as more liberal than that of the

emperor. Time and again after this he aided in the overthrow of one man

or party, only to turn against the new power he had helped create. He

even tried to work with Napoleon again after Louis XVIII fled to Ghent

and Bonaparte returned from Elba to found his "new democratic empire,"

known as the Hundred Days. Waterloo came at the end of it; then

Lafayette voiced the demand for the emperor's abdication and pressed it

hard.

 

"What!" he cried in answer to Lucien Bonaparte's appeal to the Chamber

of Deputies not to desert his brother, because that would be a

violation of national honor, "you accuse us of failing in duty toward

honor, toward Napoleon! Do you forget all we have done for him? The

bones of our brothers and of our children cry aloud from the sands of

Africa, from the banks of the Guadalquivir and the Tagus, from the

[Pg 282]shores of the Vistula and the glacial deserts of Russia. During

more than ten years three million Frenchmen have perished for this man

who wants to-day to fight all Europe. We have done enough for him. Our

duty now is to save our country!"

 

Lafayette was one of the deputation sent by the Chamber to thank the

ex-emperor after his abdication, and admired Napoleon's self-possession

during that trying scene. He thought Napoleon "played grandly the role

necessity forced upon him." Lafayette was also one of the commission

sent to negotiate with the victorious allies. It was there that he gave

his spirited answer to the demand that Napoleon be given up. "I am

astonished you should choose a prisoner of Olmütz as the person to whom

to make that shameful proposal."

 

Louis XVIII returned to power and soon Lafayette was opposing him.

So it went on for years. He said of himself that he was a man of

institutions, not of dynasties; and that he valued first principles so

much that he was very willing to compromise on matters of secondary

importance. He cared nothing for apparent consistency and did whatever

his erratic republican conscience dictated, without a thought of how

it might look to others. He was a born optimist, but a poor judge of

men; and in spite of repeated disappointments believed the promises

of each new ruler who came along. Liberal representative government

was of supreme importance in his eyes. If France was not yet ready

for a president, she could have it under a king. Each administration

[Pg 283]that promised a step in this direction received his support,

each lapse from it his censure. That appears to be the key to the many

shifting changes of his later life.

 

His popularity among the people waxed and waned. Usually it kept him

his seat in the Chamber of Deputies. From 1818 to 1824 he represented

the Sarthe; from 1825 to the close of his life the district of Meaux.

It was in the interval between that he made his visit to America. He

returned to find Charles X king. As that monarch lost popularity his

own influence gained. Charles's ministers thought their sovereign

showed ill-placed confidence and esteem when he freely acknowledged

that this liberal leader had rendered services to his family that no

true man could forget. "I know him well," Charles said. "We were born

in the same year. We learned to mount a horse together at the riding

academy at Versailles. He was a member of my division in the Assembly

of Notables. The fact is neither of us has changed--he no more than I."

That was just the point. Neither had changed. Charles X was a Bourbon

to the bone, and Lafayette had come back from America with renewed

health, replenished means, and all the revolutionary impetuosity of

youth. He had not one atom of that willingness to put up with "things

as they are" which grows upon many reformers as their hair turns gray.

John Quincy Adams divined this and advised Lafayette to have nothing

more to do with revolutions. "He is sixty-eight years old, but there is

fire beneath the cinders," the President of the United States confided

to his diary in August, 1825.

 

[Pg 284]The cinders glowed each time Charles X emphasized his

Bourbonism; and caught fire again when the king made the Prince de

Polignac prime minister in defiance of all liberal Frenchmen. That

happened in 1829. Lafayette took occasion to visit Auvergne, the

province of his birth, in company with his son, and was received with

an enthusiasm rivaling his most popular days in America. The journey

was prolonged farther than strict necessity required and did much

to unite opposition to the king, for leaders of the liberal party

profited by banquets and receptions in Lafayette's honor to spread

their doctrines. More than one official who permitted such gatherings

lost his job in consequence. Lafayette returned to La Grange; but in

the following July, when the storm broke, he called for his horses

and hurried to Paris. The Chamber of Deputies was not in session; he

thought it ought to be; and he started as soon as he had read a copy

of the Royal Ordinances which limited the freedom of the press and

otherwise threatened the rights of the people.

 

Before he reached Paris blood had been shed and barricades had been

thrown across the streets. Alighting from his carriage, he told the

guards his name, dragged his stiff leg over the obstructions, and

joined the little group of legislators who were striving to give this

revolt the sanction of law. Having had more experience in revolutions

than they--this was his fourth--he became their leader, and on July

29, 1830, found himself in the exact position he had occupied forty

[Pg 285]years before, commander of the National Guard and practically

dictator of France. An unwillingly admiring biographer says that he had