But hope grew. On the very day of Chasteler's visit the prisoners learned that negotiations for peace, already begun, contained a clause which would set them free. These negotiations were being directed in part—a very important part—by a remarkable man who had been only an unknown second lieutenant when the troubles began in France, but whose name was now on everybody's lips and whose power was rapidly approaching that of a dictator. The elder De SÉgur, father of Lafayette's friend, had started him on his spectacular career by placing him in the military academy. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. A man even less sagacious than he would have seen the advantage of making friends rather than enemies of Lafayette's supporters in Europe and America.

Thus it was partly because of repeated demands for his release coming from England and France and America, and largely because Napoleon willed it, that Lafayette was finally set free. Also there is little doubt that Austria was heartily tired of being his jailer. Tourgot said that Lafayette would have been released much earlier if anybody had known what on earth to do with him, but that neither Italy nor France would tolerate him within its borders. Tourgot supposed the emperor would raise no objection to the arrangement he had concluded to turn over "all that caravan" to America as a means of getting rid of him; "of which I shall be very glad," he added. The American consul at Hamburg was to receive the prisoners, and he promised that they should be gone in ten days. This time Lafayette was not given a chance to say Yes or No.

On September 18, 1797, five years and a month after he had been arrested, and two years lacking one month from the time Madame Lafayette and the girls joined him, the gates of OlmÜtz opened and he and his "caravan" went forth: Latour Maubourg, Bureaux de Pusy, the faithful Felix, and other humble members of their retinue who had shared imprisonment with them. Louis Romeuf, the aide-de-camp, who had taken down Lafayette's farewell words to France and who had been zealous in working for his relief, rode joyously to meet them, but so long as Austria had authority the military kept him at arm's-length. The party had one single glimpse of him, but it was not until they had reached Dresden that he was permitted to join them.

Gradually sun and wind lost their feeling of strangeness on prison-blanched cheeks. Gradually the crowds that gathered to watch them pass dared show more interest. Lafayette's face was not unknown to all who saw him. An Austrian pressed forward to thank him for saving his life in Paris on a day when Lafayette had set his wits against the fury of the mob. When the party reached Hamburg Gouverneur Morris and his host, who was an imperial minister, left a dinner-party to go through the form of receiving the prisoners from their Austrian guard, thus "completing their liberty." The short time spent in Hamburg was devoted to writing letters of thanks to Huger, to Fitzpatrick, and the others who had worked for their release.

The one anxiety during this happy journey had been caused by the condition of Madame Lafayette, who showed, now that the strain was removed, how very much the prison months had cost her. She did her best to respond to the demands made upon her strength by the friendliness of the crowds; but it was evident that in her state of exhaustion a voyage to America was not to be thought of. From Hamburg, therefore, the Lafayettes went to the villa of Madame TessÉ on the shores of Lake PloËn in Holstein. Here they remained several weeks in happy reunion with relatives and close friends; and it was here a few months later that Anastasie, Lafayette's elder daughter, was married to a younger brother of Latour de Maubourg, to the joy of every one, though to the mock consternation of the lively, white-haired Countess of TessÉ, who declared that these young people, ruined by the Revolution, were setting up housekeeping in a state of poverty and innocence unequaled since the days of Adam and Eve.

The Lafayettes and the Maubourgs took together a large castle at Lhemkulen, not far from Madame de TessÉ, where Lafayette settled himself to wait until he should be allowed to return to France. It was here that George rejoined his family. He had been a child when his father saw him last; he returned a man, older than Lafayette had been when he set out for America. Washington had been very kind to him, but his years in America had not been happy. Probably he felt instinctively the constraint in regard to him.

Washington had been much distressed by Lafayette's misfortune and had taken every official step possible to secure his release. It was through the good offices of the American minister at London that Lafayette had learned that his wife and children still lived. Washington had sent Madame Lafayette not only sympathetic words, but a check for one thousand dollars, in the hope that it might relieve some of her pressing necessities. He even wrote the Austrian emperor a personal letter in Lafayette's behalf. When he heard that George was to be sent him he "desired to serve the father of this young man, and to become his best friend," but he did not find the godfatherly duty entirely easy. It threatened to conflict with his greater duty as father of his country, strange as it seems that kindness to one innocent, unhappy boy could have that effect. Washington was President of the United States at the time and it behooved the young nation to be very circumspect. Diplomacy is a strange game of many rules and pitfalls; and it might prove embarrassing and compromising to have as member of his family the son of a man who was looked upon by most of the governments of Europe as an arch criminal.

Washington wrote to George in care of the Boston friend to whose house the youth would go on landing, advising him not to travel farther, but to enter Harvard and pursue his studies there. But M. Frestel also came to America, by another ship and under an assumed name, and George continued his education with him instead of entering college. He possessed little of his father's faculty for making friends, though the few who knew him esteemed him highly. The most impressionable years of his life had been passed amid tragic scenes, and his natural reserve and tendency to silence had been increased by anxiety about his father's fate. After a time he went to Mount Vernon and became part of the household there. One of Washington's visitors wrote: "I was particularly struck with the marks of affection which the general showed his pupil, his adopted son, son of the Marquis de Lafayette. Seated opposite to him, he looked at him with pleasure and listened to him with manifest interest." A note in Washington's business ledger shows that the great man was both generous and sympathetic in fulfilling his fatherly duties. It reads: "By Geo. W. Fayette, gave for the purpose of his getting himself such small articles of clothing as he might not choose to ask for, $100." It was at Mount Vernon that the news of his real father's release came to George. He rushed out into the fields away from everybody, to shout and cry and give vent to his emotion unseen by human eyes.His father was pleased by the development he noted in him; pleased by the letter Washington sent by the hand of "your son, who is highly deserving of such parents as you and your estimable lady." Pleased, too, that George had the manners to stop in Paris on the way home long enough to pay his respects to Napoleon, and that, in the absence of the general, he had been kindly received by Madame Bonaparte. Natural courtesy as well as policy demanded that the Lafayettes fully acknowledge their debt to Napoleon. One of Lafayette's first acts on being set free had been to write him the following joint letter of thanks with Maubourg and Pusy:

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 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, 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."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 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 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.