During the long, dark night of Lafayette's imprisonment he had dreamed of America as the land of dawn and hope, and planned to make a new home there, but when release came this had not seemed best. Madame Lafayette's health had been too frail, and La Grange, with its neglected acres, was too obviously awaiting a master. "Besides, we lack the first dollar to buy a farm. That, in addition to many other considerations, should prevent your tormenting yourself about it," he told Adrienne. One of these considerations was the beloved old aunt at Chavaniac, who lived to the age of ninety-two and never ceased to be the object of his special care. Also his young people, with their marriages and budding families, were too dear to permit him willingly to put three thousand miles of ocean between them and himself. But he had never lost touch with his adopted country. At the time he declined Napoleon's offer to make him minister to the United States he wrote a correspondent that he had by no means given up the hope of visiting it again as a private citizen; though, he added, humorously, [Pg 259]he fancied that if he landed in America in anything except a military uniform he would feel as embarrassed and as much out of place as a savage in knee-breeches. After Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States, foreseeing he could not profitably keep it, Jefferson sounded Lafayette about coming to be governor of the newly acquired territory. That offer, too, he had seen fit to refuse; but his friends called him "the American enthusiast." Time went by until almost fifty years had passed since the "Bostonians" took their stand against the British king. To celebrate the semi-centennial, America decided to raise a monument to the heroes of Bunker Hill. Lafayette was asked to lay the corner-stone at the ceremonies which were to take place on the fiftieth anniversary of the battle. It became the pleasant duty of President James Monroe, who had served as a subaltern in the battle where Lafayette received his American wound, to send him the official invitation of Congress and to place a government frigate at his disposal for the trip. A turn of French elections in 1824 had left him temporarily "a statesman out of a job," without even the duty of representing his district in the Chamber of Deputies. There was really no reason why he should not accept and every reason why he might at last gratify his desire to see America and American friends again.