Louis XVIII. was a weak, despotic ruler; the members of his house were equally narrow-minded and overbearing. Lafayette opposed their government in every way he could. In 1819 he was elected a member of the new Assembly, and for four years as a deputy he fought against the encroachments of the royal power. He took part in a conspiracy to overthrow the King, and when his friends cautioned him that he was risking his life and his property he answered, “Bah! I have already lived a long time, and it seems to me that I would worthily crown my political career by dying on a scaffold in the cause of liberty.” That conspiracy failed, and although Lafayette was known to have been connected with the plot, neither the King nor his ministers dared to imprison him or even to call him to account. A year later he joined with other conspirators against the Bourbons, but again the plans failed through blunders. The Chamber of Deputies attempted to investigate the affair, but Lafayette so boldly challenged a public comparison of his own and the government’s course that the royalists shrank from pursuing the matter further. They knew what the people thought of their champion and did not dare to lay a hand upon him. He retired from public life after this second conspiracy and went to live with his children and grandchildren at his country home of Lagrange. From there he wrote often to Thomas Jefferson and his other friends in the United States. If the Revolution in France had failed to bring about that republic he dreamed of the struggle in America had at least borne good fruits. More and more he thought of the young nation across the sea, in the birth of which he had played a great part, and more and more he wished to visit it again. So when he was invited by President Monroe in 1824 he gladly accepted, and for the fourth time set out across the Atlantic. XIII THE UNITED STATES WELCOMES THE HERO The first half century of American independence was drawing near, and the Congress of the United States, mindful of the days when Lafayette had offered his sword in defense of liberty, voted unanimously that President Monroe be requested to invite the General to visit America as the guest of the nation. President Monroe joyfully acted as Congress requested, and placed at Lafayette’s service an American war-ship. The Frenchman, now sixty-seven years old, was eager to accept, but he declined the use of the war-ship, and sailed instead, with his son George Washington Lafayette and his private secretary on the American merchantman _Cadmus_, leaving Havre on July 13, 1824.