Arrived in Philadelphia, he announced that he had come to serve at his own expense and as volunteer. The Continental Congress, touched by the magnanimous devotion of the youthful stranger, and apprised of his distinguished connections at home, appointed him without delay Major-General in the army of the United States, where he took rank by the side of Gates and Greene, Lincoln and Lee. Born to exalted condition in an ancient monarchy, he found himself welcomed to the highest place in the military councils of a struggling republic, and this while still a youth under twenty,--younger than Fox, younger than Pitt, when they astonished the world by their precocious parliamentary powers,--younger than Condé, in his own beautiful France, on the field of Rocroi. And his modesty was not less eminent than his post. To Washington, who made apologies for exhibiting his troops before a French officer, he replied with interesting simplicity, “I have come to learn, and not to teach.”[60] The Commander-in-Chief, usually so grave, was won at once to that perpetual friendship which endured unbroken as long as life,--showing itself now in tears of joy and then in tears of grief,--watching the youthful stranger with paternal care,--sharing with him table, tent, and on the field of Monmouth the same cloak for a couch,--following his transcendent fortunes, now on giddiest heights and then in gloom, with constant, unabated attachment,--corresponding with him at all times,--addressing him in terms of unwonted endearment as “the man he loved,”[61] and saying again that he “had not words to express his affection, were he to attempt it,”[62]--sending kindly sympathy to that devoted wife in her unparalleled affliction, and pleading across sea and continent with the Austrian despot for his release from the dungeons of Olmütz.