"On returning from the chase," says de Chastellux (he had been out hunting squirrels), "I dined at the Duke de Lauzun's with Governor Trumbull. This good methodical governor is seventy years old. His whole life is consecrated to business, which he passionately loves, whether it is important or not. He has all the simplicity and pedantry of a great magistrate of a small republic, and invariably says he will consider, that he must refer to his council. He wears the antique dress of the first settlers in this colony." Then the marquis goes on to tell how the small old man, in his single-breasted, drab-colored coat, tight knee-breeches, and muslin wrist-ruffles, walked up to the table where twenty hussar officers were waiting and with "formal stiffness pronounced in a loud voice a long prayer in the form, of a Benedicite." The French officers must have been surprised; they were not used to simple country manners and to grace before meat on all occasions, but they were too polite and too well trained to laugh. "Twenty amens issued at once from the midst of forty moustaches," says the marquis, and in spite of the fun he makes of the old Puritan governor's stiff manners, we feel in reading the story that he fully appreciates his sterling good qualities. Some of these pleasure-loving French gentlemen met a strange and sad fate, years later, in the terrible days of the French Revolution. The Duke de Lauzun was beheaded in Paris in 1793, his long and adventurous life "ended with a little spurt of blood under the knife of the guillotine"; and Lafayette spent five years in an Austrian prison. There is another story of old Lebanon which is connected with the visit of the French soldiers. The French commander-in-chief, the Count de Rochambeau, had given to Madam Faith Trumbull, the governor's wife, a beautiful scarlet cloak, and one Sabbath day she appeared in the governor's pew in the Lebanon meeting-house wearing the French general's handsome gift. Now, in those hard times contributions for the army were often collected after service on Sundays, and the people not only gave money, but whatever else they could spare, Indian corn, flax, wood, shoes and stockings, hats and coats. Quietly the governor's wife rose in her seat and, taking the scarlet cloak from her shoulders, carried it down to the front and laid it with the other gifts. Later, it was cut into narrow bands and used to make red stripes on the soldiers' uniforms. All that is left of those stirring times in Lebanon to-day is the little "War Office,"--restored and kept as a memorial of the Revolution,--and the mound on the Green where the brick oven stood in which bread was baked for the French soldiers who fought for American independence. REFERENCES 1. Stuart, I. W. _Life of Jonathan Trumbull./i> Crocker & firewater. Boston, 1859. 2. _The Lebanon War Office./i> Published by the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the Revolution. Hartford, 1891.