The emperor said of him one day:
"Everybody in France is corrected of his extreme ideas of liberty except
one man, and that man is La Fayette. You see him now tranquil: very
well; if he had an opportunity to serve his chimeras, he would reappear
on the scene more ardent than ever."
Upon his return to France, he was granted the pension belonging to the
military rank he had held under the republic, and he recovered a
competent estate from the property of his wife. Napoleon also gave a
military commission to his son, George Washington; and, when the
Bourbons were restored, La Fayette received an indemnity of four hundred
and fifty thousand francs.
Napoleon's remark proved correct. La Fayette, though he spent most of
the evening of his life in directing the cultivation of his estate, was
always present at every crisis in the affairs of France to plead the
cause of constitutional liberty. He made a fine remark once in its
defense, when taunted with the horrors of the French Revolution: "The
tyranny of 1793," he said, "was no more a republic than the massacre of
St. Bartholomew was a religion."
His visit to America in 1824 is well remembered. He was the guest of the
nation; and Congress, in recompense of his expenditures during the
Revolutionary War, made him a grant of two hundred thousand dollars and
an extensive tract of land. It was La Fayette who, in 1830, was chiefly
instrumental in placing a constitutional monarch on the throne of
France.
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