Lafayette took his business of being a soldier seriously, and in the summer of 1785 made another journey, this time in the interest of his military education. Frederick II, King of Prussia, was still living. Lafayette obtained permission to attend the maneuvers of his army, counting himself fortunate to receive lessons in strategy from this greatest warrior of his time. He was not surprised to find the old monarch bent and rheumatic, with fingers twisted with gout, and head pulled over on one side until it almost rested on his shoulder; or to see that his blue uniform with red facings was dirty and sprinkled with snuff. But he was astonished to discover that the eyes in Frederick's emaciated old face were strangely beautiful and lighted up his countenance at times with an expression of the utmost sweetness. It was not often that they transformed him thus from an untidy old man to an angel of benevolence. Usually they were keen, sometimes mockingly malicious. It was certainly not without malice that he seated the young French [Pg 181]general at his table between two other guests, Lord Cornwallis and the Duke of York; and in the course of long dinners amused himself by asking Lafayette questions about Washington and the American campaigns. Lafayette answered with his customary ardor, singing praises of his general and even venturing to praise republicanism in a manner that irritated the old monarch. "Monsieur!" Frederick interrupted him in such a flight. "I once knew a young man who visited countries where liberty and equality reigned. After he got home he took it into his head to establish them in his own country. Do you know what happened?" "No, Sire." "He was hanged!" the old man replied, with a sardonic grin. It was plain he liked Lafayette or he would not have troubled to give him the warning. Lafayette continued his journey to Prague and Vienna and Dresden, where he saw other soldiers put through their drill. Then he returned to Potsdam for the final grand maneuvers under the personal direction of Frederick, but a sudden acute attack of gout racked his kingly old bones, and the exercises which, in his clockwork military system, could no more be postponed than the movements of the planets, were carried out by the heir apparent, to Lafayette's great disappointment. He wrote Washington that the prince was "a good officer, an honest fellow, a man of sense," but that he would never have the talent of his two uncles. As for the Prussian army, it was a wonderful machine, but "if the resources of France, the vivacity of her soldiers, the intelligence [Pg 182]of her officers, the national ambition and moral delicacy were applied to a system worked out with equal skill, we would as far excel the Prussians as our army is now inferior to theirs--which is saying a great deal!" _Vive la France! Vivent_ moral distinctions! He may not have realized it, but Lafayette was all his life more interested in justice than in war.