Lafayette could no more leave politics alone than he could keep
from breathing; and even in its stilted phrases of thanks this
letter managed to show how much more he valued the Republic than any
individual. Perhaps even at that early date he mistrusted Napoleon's
personal ambition.
With the leisure of exile on his hands, and pens and paper once more
within easy reach, he plunged into correspondence and into the project
of writing a book with Maubourg and Pusy to set forth their views of
government. Pens and paper seem to have been the greatest luxuries of
his exile, for the family fortunes were at a low ebb. Two of Madame
Lafayette's younger sisters joined her and the three pooled their
ingenuity and their limited means to get the necessaries of life at
the lowest possible cost. "The only resource of the mistress of the
establishment was to make 'snow eggs' when she was called upon to
[Pg 253]provide an extra dish for fifteen or sixteen persons all dying
of hunger." This state of things continued after they had gone to live
at Vianen near Utrecht in Holland, in order to be a little closer to
France. Lafayette had asked permission of the Directory to return with
the officers who had left France with him, but received no answer.
Since Madame Lafayette's name was not on the list of suspected persons,
she could come and go as she would, and she made several journeys, when
health permitted, to attend to business connected with the inheritance
coming to her from her mother's estate. She was in Paris in November,
1799, when the Directory was overthrown and Napoleon became practically
king of France for the term of ten years with the title of First
Consul. She sent her husband a passport under an assumed name and bade
him come at once without asking permission of any one and without
any guaranty of personal safety beyond the general one that the new
government promised justice to all. This was advice after his own heart
and he suddenly appeared in Paris. Once there he wrote to Napoleon,
announcing his arrival. Napoleon's ministers were scandalized and
declared he must go back. Nobody had the courage to mention the subject
to the First Consul, whose anger was already a matter of wholesome
dread; but Madame Lafayette took the situation into her own hands. She
went to see Napoleon as simply as if she were calling upon her lawyer,
and just as if he were her lawyer she laid her husband's case before
him. The calm and gentle effrontery filled him with delight. "Madame,
[Pg 254]I am charmed to make your acquaintance!" he cried; "you are a
woman of spirit--but you do not understand affairs."
However, it was agreed that Lafayette might remain in France, provided
he retired to the country and kept very quiet while necessary
formalities were complied with. In March, 1800, his name and those of
the companions of his flight were removed from the lists of _émigrés_.
After this visit of Madame Lafayette to the First Consul the family
took up its residence about forty miles from Paris at La Grange near
Rozoy, a château dating from the twelfth century, which had belonged
to Madame d'Ayen. But it was not as the holder of feudal dwellings and
traditions that Lafayette installed himself in the place that was to be
his home for the rest of his life. He had willingly given up his title
when the Assembly abolished such things in 1790. Mirabeau mockingly
called him "Grandison Lafayette" for voting for such a measure. It was
as an up-to-date farmer that he began life all over again at the age
of forty-two. He made Felix Pontonnier his manager, and they worked
literally from the ground up, for the estate had been neglected and
there was little money to devote to it. Gradually he accumulated
plants and animals and machines from all parts of the world; writing
voluminous letters about flocks and fruit-trees, and exchanging much
advice and many seeds; pursuing agriculture, he said, himself, "with
all the ardor he had given in youth to other callings." A decade later
he announced with pride that "with a little theory and ten years of
experience he had succeeded fairly well."
[Pg 255]As soon as Napoleon's anger cooled he received Lafayette
and Latour Maubourg, conversing affably, even jocularly about their
imprisonment. "I don't know what the devil you did to the Austrians,"
he said, "but it cost them a mighty effort to let you go." For a time
Lafayette saw the First Consul frequently and was on excellent terms
with other members of his family. Lucien Bonaparte is said to have
cherished the belief that Lafayette would not have objected to him as
a son-in-law. But in character and principle Lafayette and the First
Consul were too far apart to be really friends. It was to the interest
of each to secure the good will of the other, and both appear honestly
to have tried. The two have been said to typify the beginning and the
end of the French Revolution: Lafayette, the generous, impractical
theories of its first months: Napoleon, the strong will and strong hand
needed to pull the country out of the anarchy into which these theories
had degenerated. Lafayette was too much of an optimist and idealist not
to speak his mind freely to the First Consul, even when asking favors
for old friends. Napoleon was too practical not to resent lectures
from a man whose theories had signally failed of success; and far too
much of an autocrat to enjoy having his personal favors refused. The
grand cross of the Legion of Honor, a seat in the French Senate at a
time when it depended on the will of Napoleon and not on an election of
the people, and the post of minister to the United States were refused
in turn. Lafayette said he was more interested in agriculture than in
[Pg 256]embassies, and made it plain that an office to which he was
elected was the only kind he cared to hold. If Napoleon hoped to gain
his support by appealing to his ambition, he failed utterly.
Gradually their relations became strained and the break occurred in
1802 when Napoleon was declared Consul for life. Lafayette was now an
elector for the Department of Seine and Marne, an office within the
gift of the people, and as such had to vote on the proposal to make
Bonaparte Consul for life.
He cast his vote against it, inscribing on the register of his
Commune: "I cannot vote for such a magistracy until public liberty
is sufficiently guaranteed. Then I shall give my vote to Napoleon
Bonaparte"; and he wrote him a letter carefully explaining that there
was nothing personal in it. "That is quite true," says a French
biographer. "A popular government, with Bonaparte at its head, would
have suited Lafayette exactly."
Napoleon as emperor and autocrat suited him not at all. He continued
to live in retirement, busy with his farm, his correspondence, and
his family, or when his duties as Deputy took him to Paris, attending
strictly to those and avoiding intercourse with Napoleon's ministers.
He made visits to Chavaniac to gladden the heart of the old aunt who
was once more mistress of the manor-house, and he rejoiced in George's
marriage to a very charming girl. In February, 1803, while in Paris, a
fall upon the ice resulted in an injury that made him lame for life.
The surgeon experimented with a new method of treatment whose only
[Pg 257]result was extreme torture even for Lafayette, whose power of
bearing pain almost equaled that of his blood brothers, the American
Indians. It was during this season of agony that Virginia, his youngest
child, was married in a neighboring room to Louis de Lasteyrie, by the
same priest who had followed the brave De Noailles women to the foot of
the scaffold. Instead of the profusion of plate and jewels which would
have been hers before the Revolution, the family "assessed itself"
to present to the bride and her husband a portfolio containing two
thousand francs--about four hundred dollars.
In 1807 the greatest grief of Lafayette's life came to him in the death
of his wife, who had never recovered from the rigors of Olmütz. "It
is not for having come to Olmütz that I wish to praise her here," the
heartbroken husband wrote to Latour Maubourg soon after the Christmas
Eve on which her gentle spirit passed to another life, "but that she
did not come until she had taken the time to make every possible
provision within her power to safeguard the welfare of my aunt and the
rights of my creditors, and for having had the courage to send George
to America." The gallant, loving lady was buried in the cemetery of
Picpus, the secret place where the bodies of the victims to the Terror
had been thrown. A poor working-girl had discovered the spot, and
largely through the efforts of Madame Lafayette and her sister a chapel
had been built and the cemetery put in order--which perhaps accounts
for the simplicity of Virginia's wedding-gift.
[Pg 258]XXVII