It was eight o'clock at night, a few leagues from the French border. Their horses were weary and spent. The road approached the village of Rochefort in such a way that they could see nothing of the town until almost upon it, and the gleam of this camp-fire was their first intimation of the presence of the Austrians. It would have availed nothing to turn back. If they went toward the left they would almost certainly fall in with French patrols, or those of the ÉmigrÉs who were at LiÈge. To the right a whole chain of Austrian posts stretched toward Namur. "On all sides there was an equality of inconvenience," as Lafayette said. One of the party rode boldly forward to interview the commandant and ask permission to spend the night in the village and continue the journey next day. This was granted after it had been explained that they were neither ÉmigrÉs nor soldiers on their way to join either side, but officers forced to leave the French army, whose only desire was to reach a neutral country.

A guide was sent to conduct them to the village inn. Before they had been there many minutes Lafayette was recognized, and it was necessary to confess the whole truth. The local commander required a pass from the officer at Namur, and when that person learned the name of his chief prisoner he would hear nothing more about passports, but communicated in joyful haste with his superior officer, the Duc de Bourbon. At Namur Lafayette received a visit from Prince Charles of Lorraine, who sent word in advance that he wished "to talk about the condition in which Lafayette had left France." Lafayette replied that he did not suppose he was to be asked questions it might be inconvenient to answer, and when the high-born caller entered with his most affable manner he was received with distant coolness by all the prisoners.

From Namur they were taken to Nivelles, where they were presented with a government order to give up all French treasure in their possession. Lafayette could not resist answering that he was quite sure their Royal Highnesses would have brought the treasure with them had they been in his place; and the amusement of the Frenchmen increased as the messenger learned, to his evident discomfiture, that the twenty-three of them combined did not have enough to keep them in comfort for two months. That same day the prisoners were divided into three groups. Those who had not served in the French National Guard were given their liberty and told to leave the country. Others were sent to the citadel at Antwerp and kept there for two months. Lafayette and three companions who had served with him in the Assembly, Latour Maubourg, a lifelong friend, Alexander Lameth, and Bureaux de Pusy, were taken to Luxembourg. There was only time for a hurried leave-taking. Lafayette spent it with an aide who was to go to Antwerp. Feeling sure he was marked for death, he dictated to this officer a message to be published to the French people when he should be no more.

Before leaving Rochefort he had found means of sending a letter to his wife, who was at Chavaniac overseeing repairs upon the old manor-house. It was from this letter that she learned what had befallen him, and she carried it in her bosom until she was arrested in her turn. The message to Adrienne began characteristically on a note of optimism. "Whatever the vicissitudes of fortune, dear heart, you know my soul is not of a temper to be cast down." He told of his misfortune in a gallant way, saying the Austrian officer thought it his duty to arrest him. He hurriedly reviewed the reasons that led up to his flight, said that he did not know how long his journey "might be retarded," and bade her join him in England with all the family. His closing words were: "I offer no excuses to my children or to you for having ruined my family. There is not one of you who would owe fortune to conduct contrary to my conscience. Come to me in England. Let us establish ourselves in America, where we shall find a liberty which no longer exists in France, and there my tenderness will endeavor to make up to you the joys you have lost."

His journey was "retarded" for five years, and for a large part of that time seemed likely to end only at the grave, possibly by way of the executioner's block. It is to be hoped that his sense of humor allowed him to enjoy one phase of his situation. He had been driven from France on the charge that he favored the king, yet he was no sooner across the border than he was arrested on exactly the opposite charge; that of being a dangerous revolutionist, an enemy to all monarchs. When he demanded a passport he received the sinister answer that he was to be kept safely until the French king regained his power and was in a position to sentence him himself. He was sent from prison to prison. First to Wezel, where he remained three months in a rat-infested dungeon, unable to communicate with any one, and watched over by an officer of the guard who was made to take a daily oath to give him no news. "One would think," said Lafayette, "that they had imprisoned the devil himself." He was so thoroughly isolated that Latour Maubourg, a few cells away, learned only through the indiscretion of a jailer that he was seriously ill. Maubourg asked permission, in case the illness proved fatal, to be with him at the last, but was told that no such privilege could be granted. But Lafayette did not die and even in the worst of his physical ills had the spirit to reply, "The King of Prussia is impertinent!" when a royal message came offering to soften the rigors of his captivity in return for information about France. The message was from that "honest prince" who in Lafayette's opinion "would never have the genius of his uncle."Another answer, equally inconsiderate of royal feelings, resulted in the transfer of the prisoners to Magdebourg, where they were kept a year. On these journeys from place to place they served as a show to hundreds who pressed to see them. There were even attempts to injure them, but Lafayette believed he saw more pitying faces than hostile ones in the crowds. Once fate brought them to an inn at the same moment with the Comte d'Artois and his retinue, all of whom, with a single exception, proved blind to the presence of their former friends. We have details of the way in which Lafayette was lodged and treated at Magdebourg, from a letter he managed to send to his stanch friend, the Princesse d'HÉnin in London.

"Imagine an opening under the rampart of the citadel, surrounded by a high, strong palisade. It is through that, after opening successively four doors each guarded with chains and padlocks and bars of iron, that one reaches, not without some trouble and some noise, my dungeon, which is three paces wide and five and a half long. The side wall is covered with mold; that in front lets in light, but not the sun, through a small barred window. Add to this two sentinels who can look down into our subterranean chamber, but are outside the palisade so that we cannot speak to them.... The noisy opening of our four doors occurs every morning to allow my servant to enter; at dinner-time, that I may dine in presence of the commandant of the citadel and of the guard; and at night when my servant is taken away to his cell." The one ornament on his prison wall was a French inscription, in which the dismal words souffrir and mourir were made to rhyme. The one break in the prison routine had been an execution, upon which, had he chosen, Lafayette could have looked from his window as from a box at the opera.

After a year of this he was moved again and turned over to the Emperor of Prussia, his prison journeys ending finally at the gloomy fortress of OlmÜtz in the Carpathian Mountains. Something may be said in defense of the severity with which his captors guarded him. He steadfastly refused to give his parole, preferring, he said, to take his liberty instead of having it granted him. This undoubtedly added a zest to life in prison which would otherwise have been lacking, and very likely contributed not a little to his serenity and even to his physical well-being. It transformed the uncomfortable prison routine into a contest of wits, with the odds greatly against him, but which left him honorably free to seize any advantage that came his way. He foiled the refusal to allow him writing materials by writing letters as he wrote that one to Madame d'HÉnin, with vinegar and lampblack in a book on a blank leaf which had escaped the vigilant eye of his guard. Knowing very little German, he dug out of his memory forgotten bits of school-day Latin to use upon his jailers. He took every bit of exercise allowed him in order to keep up his physical strength. He believed he might have need of it. He even lived his life with a certain gay zest, and took particular delight in celebrating the Fourth of July, 1793, in his lonely cell by writing a letter to the American minister at London. He gave his vivid imagination free rein in concocting plans of escape.

Friends on the outside were busy with plans, too; and though he got no definite news of them, his optimism was too great to permit him to doubt that they were doing everything possible for his release. At the very outset of his captivity he applied to be set free on the ground that he was an American citizen, though there was small chance of the request being granted. He was sure Washington would not forget him; he knew that Gouverneur Morris had deposited a sum of money with his captors upon which he might draw at need. Madame de StaËl, the daughter of Necker, and the Princesse d'HÉnin were in London, busy exercising feminine influence in his behalf. General Cornwallis and General Tarleton had interceded for him, and later he learned that Fitzpatrick, the young Englishman he had liked on their first meeting in London, the same who afterward carried letters for him from America, had spoken for him in Parliament. Fox and Sheridan and Wilberforce added their eloquence; but the cautious House of Commons decided it was none of its business and voted against the proposal to ask for Lafayette's release, in the same proportion that the citizens of Paris had rejected him for mayor.

French voices also were raised in his behalf. One of the earliest and most courageous was that of Lally Tollendal, who as member of the French Assembly had quarreled with Lafayette for being so much of a monarchist. But later he changed his mind and acted as go-between in the negotiations for Lafayette's final plan to remove the royal family to CompiÈgne. From his exile in London Lally Tollendal now addressed a memorial to Frederick William II, telling him the plain truth, that it was unjust to keep Lafayette in jail as an enemy of the French king, because it was an effort to save Louis which had proved his ruin. "Those who regard M. de Lafayette as the cause, or even one of the causes, of the French Revolution are entirely wrong," this friend asserted. "He has played a great role, but he was not the author of the piece.... He has not taken part in a single one of its evils which would not have happened without him, while the good he did was done by him alone."

Then Lally Tollendal went on to tell how on the Sunday after Louis was arrested and brought back from Varennes Lafayette by one single emphatic statement had put an end, in a committee of the Assembly, to an ugly discussion about executing the king and proclaiming a republic. "I warn you," he had said, "that the day after you kill the king the National Guard and I will proclaim the prince royal." Lally Tollendal expatiated upon how evenly Lafayette had tried to deal out justice to royalists and revolutionists alike; how in the last days of his liberty he had said in so many words that the Jacobins must be destroyed; and that he had with difficulty been restrained from raising a flag bearing the words, "No Jacobins, no Coblenz," as a banner around which friends of the king and conservative republicans might rally. But the strict impartiality this disclosed had little charm for a king of Prussia and the appeal bore no fruit.

There were more thrilling efforts to aid him close at hand. "It is a whole romance, the attempt at rescuing Lafayette," says a French biographer. The opening scene of this romance harks back to the night when Lafayette made his first landing on American soil, piloted through the dark by Major Huger's slaves. The least noticed actor in that night's drama had been Major Huger's son, a very small boy, who hung upon the words of the unexpected guests and followed them with round, child eyes. Much had happened to change two hemispheres since, and even greater changes had occurred in the person of that small boy. He had grown up, he had resolved to be a surgeon, had finished his studies in London, and betaken himself to Vienna to pursue them further. There in the autumn of 1794 in a cafÉ he encountered a Doctor Bollman of Hanover. They fell into conversation, and before long Bollman confided to Huger that he had a secret mission. He had been charged by Lally Tollendal and American friends of Lafayette then in London to find out where the prisoner was and to plan for his escape. In his search he had traveled up and down Germany as a wealthy physician who took an interest in the unfortunate, particularly in prisoners, and treated them free of charge. For a long time he had found no clue, but at OlmÜtz, whose fortifications proved too strong in days past even for Frederick the Great, he had been invited to dinner by the prison doctor and in turn had entertained him, plying him well with wine. They talked about prisoners of note. The prison doctor admitted that he had one now on his hands; and before the dinner was over Bollman had sent an innocent-sounding message to Lafayette. Later he was allowed to send him a book, with a few written lines purporting to be nothing more than the names of some friends then in London.

When the book was returned Bollman lost no time in searching it for hidden writing. In this way he learned that Lafayette had lately been allowed to drive out on certain days a league or two from the prison for the benefit of his health, and that his guard on such occasions consisted of a stupid lieutenant and the corporal who drove the carriage. The latter was something of a coward. Lafayette would undertake to look after both of them himself if a rescuer and one trusty helper should appear. No weapons need be provided; he would take the officer's own sword away from him. All he wanted was an extra horse or two, with the assurance that his deliverers were ready. It was a bold plan, but only a bold plan could succeed. There were too many bolts and bars inside the prison to make any other kind feasible. Lameth had been set at liberty; his two other friends, Latour Maubourg and Bureaux de Pusy, were in full sympathy with the plan, and to make it easier had refrained from asking the privilege of driving out themselves. Bollman added that he could not manage the rescue alone and had come away to hunt for a trusty confederate. Huger had already told of his unforgotten meeting with Lafayette, and there was no mistaking the eagerness with which he awaited Bollman's next word or the joy with which he accepted the invitation to take part in the rescue. He was moved by something deeper than mere love of adventure. "I simply considered myself the representative of the young men of America and acted accordingly," he said long after.

The two men returned to OlmÜtz and put up at the inn where Bollman had stayed before. They managed to send a note to Lafayette. His answer told them he would leave the prison on November 8th for his next drive, how he would be dressed, and the signal by which they might know he was ready. It was a market day, with many persons on the road. They paid their score, sent their servants ahead with the traveling-carriage and luggage to await their arrival at a town called Hoff, while they came more slowly on horseback. Then they rode out of the gray old town. Neither its Gothic churches, its hoary university, nor the ingenious astronomical clock that had rung the hours from its tower for three hundred and seventy years; not even the fortifications or the prison itself, built on a plain so bare that all who left it were in full view of the sentinels at the city gates, interested these travelers as did the passers-by. Presently a small phÆton containing an officer and a civilian was driven toward them, and as it went by the pale gentleman in a blue greatcoat raised his hand to pass a white handkerchief over his forehead. The riders bowed slightly and tried to look indifferent, but that was hard work. Turning as soon as they dared, they saw that the carriage had stopped by the side of the road. Its two passengers alighted; the gentleman in blue handed a piece of money to the driver, who drove off as though going on an errand. Then leaning heavily upon the officer, seeming to find difficulty in walking, he drew him toward a footpath. But at the sound of approaching horsemen, he suddenly seized the officer's sword and attempted to wrench it from its scabbard. The officer grappled with him. Bollman and Huger flew to his assistance. In the act of dismounting Bollman drew his sword and his horse, startled by the flashing steel, plunged and bolted. Huger managed to keep hold of his own bridle, while he helped Bollman tear away the officer's hands that were closing about Lafayette's throat. The Austrian wrenched himself free and ran toward the town, shouting with all his might.

Here were three men in desperate need of flight, the alarm already raised, and only two horses to carry them to safety—one of these running wild. Huger acted with Southern gallantry and American speed. He got Lafayette upon his own steed, shouted to him to "Go to Hoff!" and caught the other horse. Misunderstanding the injunction, Lafayette, who thought he had merely been told to "Go off," rode a few steps, then turned back to help his rescuers. They motioned him away and he disappeared, in the wrong direction. The remaining horse reared and plunged, refusing to carry double. Huger persuaded Bollman to mount him, since he could be of far greater use to Lafayette, and saw him gallop away. By that time a detachment of soldiers was bearing down upon him, and between their guns he entered the prison Lafayette had so lately quitted.

At the end of twenty miles Lafayette had to change horses. He appealed to an honest-looking peasant, who helped him to find another one, but also ran to warn the authorities. These became suspicious when they saw Lafayette's wounded hand, which had been bitten by the officer almost to the bone. They arrested him on general principles and he was carried back to a captivity more onerous than before. He was deprived of all rides, of course, of all news, even of the watch and shoe-buckles which up to this time he had been allowed to retain. Bollman reached Hoff and waited for Lafayette until nightfall, then made his way into Silesia. But he was captured and returned to Austria and finally to OlmÜtz.

The treatment accorded Lafayette's would-be rescuers was barbarous in the extreme. Huger was chained hand and foot in an underground cell, where he listened to realistic descriptions of beheadings, and, worse still, of how prisoners were walled up and forgotten. Daily questions and threats of torture were tried to make him confess that the attempt was part of a wide-spread conspiracy. As his statements and his courage did not waver, the prison authorities came at last to believe him, and he was taken to a cell aboveground where it was possible to move three steps, though he was still chained. He found that Bollman was confined in the cell just above him. The latter let down a walnut shell containing a bit of ink and also a scrap of paper. With these Huger wrote a few lines to the American minister at London, telling of their plight and ending with the three eloquent words, "Don't forget us!"—doubly eloquent to one who knew those stories of walled-up prisoners underground. They bribed the guard to smuggle this out of the prison, and in time it reached its destination. The American minister did not forget them. Through his good offices they were released and told to leave the country. They waited for no second invitation, which was very wise, because the emperor repented his clemency. He sent an order for their rearrest, but it arrived, fortunately, just too late to prevent their escape across the border.