nister of war
for leaving his post without permission. Repulsed thus by the Assembly,
coldly received at court, and rejected by the National Guard, he
returned to his army despairing of the country. There he made one more
attempt to save the king by inducing him to come to his camp and fight
for his throne. This project being rejected, and the author of it
denounced by Robespierre, his bust publicly burned in Paris, and the
medal formerly voted him broken by the hand of the executioner, he
deemed it necessary to seek an asylum in a neutral country. Having
provided for the safety of his army, he crossed the frontiers in August,
1792, accompanied by twenty-one persons, all of whom, on passing an
Austrian post, were taken prisoners, and La Fayette was thrown into a
dungeon. The friend of liberty and order was looked upon as a common
enemy. His noble wife, who had been for fifteen months a prisoner in
Paris, hastened, after her release, to share her husband's captivity.

For five years, in spite of the remonstrances of England, America, and
the friends of liberty everywhere, La Fayette remained a prisoner. To
every demand for his liberation the Austrian Government replied, with
its usual stupidity, that the liberty of La Fayette was incompatible
with the safety of the governments of Europe. He owed his liberation, at
length, to General Bonaparte, and it required all _his_ great authority
to procure it. When La Fayette was presented to Napoleon to thank him
for his interference, the first consul said to him:

"I don't know what the devil you have done to the Austrians; but it cost
them a mighty struggle to let you go."

La Fayette voted publicly against making Napoleon consul for life,
against the establishment of the empire. Notwithstanding this, Napoleon
and he remained very good friends. 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 tho