lings, had
the news of your illness reached me before I knew my beloved General, my
adopted father, was out of danger? I was struck at the idea of the
situation you have been in, while I, uninformed and so distant from you,
was anticipating the long-waited-for pleasure to hear from you, and the
still more endearing prospect of visiting you and presenting you the
tribute of a revolution, one of your first offsprings. For God's sake, my
dear General, take care of your health!"

Presently, as the French Revolution gathered force, the anxiety was
reversed, Washington writing that "The lively interest which I take in
your welfare, my dear Sir, keeps my mind in constant anxiety for your
personal safety." This fear was only too well founded, for shortly after
Lafayette was a captive in an Austrian prison and his wife was appealing
to her husband's friend for help. Our ministers were told to do all they
could to secure his liberty, and Washington wrote a personal letter to the
Emperor of Austria. Before receiving her letter, on the first news of the
"truly affecting" condition of "poor Madame Lafayette," he had written to
her his sympathy, and, supposing that money was needed, had deposited at
Amsterdam two hundred guineas "subject to your orders."

When she and her daughters joined her husband in prison, Lafayette's son,
and Washington's godson, came to America; an arrival of which the
godfather wrote that, "to express all the sensibility, which has been
excited in my breast by the receipt of young Lafayette's letter, from the
recollection of his father's merits, services, and sufferings, from my
friendship for him, and from my wishes to become a friend and father to
his son is unnecessary." The lad became a member of the family, and a
visitor at this time records that "I was particularly struck with the
marks of affection which the General showed his pupil, his adopted son of
Marquis de Lafayette. Seated opposite to him, he looked at him with
pleasure, and listened to him with manifest interest." With Washington he
continued till the final release of his father, and a simple business note
in Washington's ledger serves to show both his delicacy and his generosity
to the boy: "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." Another item in the accounts was three hundred dollars "to defray
his exps. to France," and by him Washington sent a l