In addition to all these military matters, a great deal of attention must have been given to acquiring the power of clear and forcible expression in the French language. While Lafayette can never be included among the great orators of the world, he possessed a wonderfully pellucid and concise diction. He was a voluminous writer. If all the letters he sent across the ocean from America could be recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic, there would be enough to make several large volumes. Sometimes he dispatched as many as thirty letters at one time. He sent them by way of Spain, by way of Holland, or by any other roundabout route that offered promise of final delivery. But privateersmen frequently captured the boats that carried them, and very often the letter-bags were dropped overboard. Still another circumstance deprived the world of many of his writings. When revolutionists took possession of the Lafayette home in Chaviniac, they sought in every nook and cranny to find evidence that they would have been glad to use against these representatives of the nobility. Madame de Lafayette had carefully stuffed all the letters she could find into the maw of the immense old range in the castle kitchen. Other treasures were buried in the garden, there to rot before they could be found again. Of the extant writings of Lafayette there are six volumes in French, made up of letters and miscellaneous papers, many of them on weighty subjects, while numerous letters of Lafayette are to be found among the correspondence of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and other statesmen and generals of Revolutionary days. Of the English language Lafayette's knowledge was mainly gained during the six long weeks of his first voyage to America. And what he acquired he at once put into practice. He learned the language from books, and from good books. As a result his English, both spoken and written, had a special polish. At the College du Plessis Lafayette was an industrious student. All his life he regarded time as a gift of which the best use was to be made, and, according to his own expression, he was "not at liberty to lose it himself, and still less to be the occasion of the loss of it to others." Therefore he would not, unless it was absolutely unavoidable, be unpunctual to engagements, or keep people waiting his pleasure. As a boy in college he never had to be urged to study; neither was he in any way an unmanageable boy. In spite of the intensity of his nature, he never deserved to be chastised.