Following his return from America at this time, Lafayette made a long tour through Germany and Austria. His purpose was to improve himself, he said, by the inspection of famous fields of battle, by conversation with the greatest generals, and by the sight of well-trained troops. He visited Frederick the Great who, in the eyes of the exquisite Frenchman, presented a most untidy appearance in a dirty uniform covered over with Spanish snuff. He saw him review thirty-one battalions and seventy-five squadrons, thirty thousand men in all, and he admired the "perfectly regular machine wound up for forty years" by which they clicked off their movements. At the table of Frederick, Lafayette ate, at one time, with Cornwallis on one side and the son of the king of England on the other; on which occasion the Prussian despot indelicately amused himself by plying the young soldier with questions about American affairs. One wonders if in all his travels Lafayette caught any glimpse on the horizon of a certain grim fortress wherein, because of his hatred of despots like Frederick, fate decreed that he was to be immured for five long years. CHAPTER XIV GATHERING CLOUDS The great storm of the French Revolution was now to appear on the horizon, climb to its height, and break in terror over France. During these years, from 1784 to 1792, Lafayette was for most of the time in Paris where he took part in events of great importance and in such a way as to command respect from those who sympathized with his liberal ideas and to win detraction from devotees of monarchial systems. At first, however, no one dreamed what the future held for France. Lafayette busied himself in doing what he could to further the affairs of the United States, turning his attention to commercial questions such as he had never supposed would interest him. Whale-oil, for instance, became a favorite subject with him; his services on behalf of that American industry were acknowledged by the seagoing people of Nantucket who sent him a gigantic, five-hundred-pound cheese, the product of scores of farms, as a testimonial of their appreciation. A cause that interested him intensely was slavery. His views on this subject he summed up in 1786 in a letter to John Adams: "In the cause of my black brethren I feel myself warmly interested, and most decidedly side, so far as respects them, against the white part of mankind. Whatever be the complexion of the enslaved, it does not, in my opinion, alter the complexion of the crime which the enslaver commits, a crime much blacker than any African face. It is to me a matter of great anxiety and concern, to find that this trade is sometimes carried on under the flag of liberty, our dear and noble stripes, to which virtue and glory have been constant standard-bearers."