Before leaving Rochefort he had found means of sending a letter to his wife, who was at Chavaniac overseeing repairs upon the old manor-house. It was from this letter that she learned what had befallen him, and she carried it in her bosom until she was arrested in her turn. The message to Adrienne began characteristically on a note of optimism. "Whatever the vicissitudes of fortune, dear heart, you know my soul is not of a temper to be cast down." He told of his misfortune in a gallant way, saying the Austrian officer thought it his duty to arrest him. He hurriedly reviewed the reasons that led up to his flight, said that he did not know how long his journey "might be retarded," and bade her join him in England with all the family. His closing words were: "I offer no excuses to my children or to you for having ruined my family. There is not one of you who would owe fortune to conduct contrary to my conscience. Come to me in England. Let us establish ourselves in America, where we shall find a liberty which no longer exists in France, and there my tenderness will endeavor to make up to you the joys you have lost." [Pg 224]His journey was "retarded" for five years, and for a large part of that time seemed likely to end only at the grave, possibly by way of the executioner's block. It is to be hoped that his sense of humor allowed him to enjoy one phase of his situation. He had been driven from France on the charge that he favored the king, yet he was no sooner across the border than he was arrested on exactly the opposite charge; that of being a dangerous revolutionist, an enemy to all monarchs. When he demanded a passport he received the sinister answer that he was to be kept safely until the French king regained his power and was in a position to sentence him himself. He was sent from prison to prison. First to Wezel, where he remained three months in a rat-infested dungeon, unable to communicate with any one, and watched over by an officer of the guard who was made to take a daily oath to give him no news. "One would think," said Lafayette, "that they had imprisoned the devil himself." He was so thoroughly isolated that Latour Maubourg, a few cells away, learned only through the indiscretion of a jailer that he was seriously ill. Maubourg asked permission, in case the illness proved fatal, to be with him at the last, but was told that no such privilege could be granted. But Lafayette did not die and even in the worst of his physical ills had the spirit to reply, "The King of Prussia is impertinent!" when a royal message came offering to soften the rigors of his captivity in return for information about France. The message was from that "honest prince" who in Lafayette's opinion "would never have the genius of his uncle."