Lafayette was planning a visit to America and sent a message to Mrs. Washington that he hoped "soon to thank her for a dish of tea at Mount Vernon." "Yes, my dear General, before the month of June is over you will see a vessel coming up the Potomac, and out of that vessel will your friend jump, with a panting heart and all the feelings of perfect happiness." He did indeed make the visit during the summer of 1784, though a few weeks later than June. Whether they had time during his ten days at Mount Vernon to talk about Mesmer history does not state. The hours must have been short for all the things clamoring to be said. Then Lafayette made a tour that carried him to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as far west as Fort Schuyler, for another treaty-making powwow with his red brothers the Indians, and south to Yorktown. Everywhere bells pealed and balls and dinners were given. Before he turned his face toward France he had a few more quiet days at Mount Vernon with Washington, who accompanied him on his homeward way as far [Pg 178]as Annapolis. At parting the elder man gave him a tender letter for Adrienne, and on the way back to Mount Vernon wrote the words of farewell which proved prophetic: "I have often asked myself, since our carriages separated, whether that was the last sight I ever should have of you; and though I wished to say No, my fears answered Yes." Washington lived fourteen years longer; but in the mean time the storm of the French Revolution broke and everything that had seemed enduring in Lafayette's life was wrecked. Until that storm burst letters and invitations and presents flashed across the see as freely as though propelled by Mesmer's magic fluid. Mrs. Washington sent succulent Virginia hams to figure at dinners given by the Lafayettes in Paris. A picture of the household in the rue de Bourbon has come down to us written by a young officer to his mother: "I seemed to be in America rather than in Paris. Numbers of English and Americans were present, for he speaks English as he does French. He has an American Indian in native costume for a footman. This savage calls him only 'father.' Everything is simple in his home. Marmontel and the Abbé Morrolet were dinner guests. Even the little girls spoke English as well as French, though they are very small. They played in English, and laughed with the Americans. This would have made charming subjects for English engravings." Lafayette on his part sent many things to that house on the banks of the Potomac. He sent his friends, and a letter from him was an [Pg 179]infallible open sesame. He sent his own accounts of journeys and interviews. He sent animals and plants that he thought would interest Washington, the farmer. Asses, for example, which were hard to get in America, and rare varieties of seeds. In time he sent the key of the Bastille. But that, as romancers say, is "another story," and opens another chapter in Lafayette's life. [Pg 180]XX THE PASSING OF OLD FRANCE