De Kalb and other military friends took a real, if humorously expressed, interest in his "little wound," and on his part he declared that he valued it at more than five hundred guineas. He had hastened to write his wife all about it, not too seriously, "for fear that General Howe, who sends his royal master rather exaggerated details of his exploits in America, may report that I am not only wounded, but dead. It would cost him no more." Reports of Lafayette's death were indeed circulated in France, but Madame d'Ayen managed to keep them from her daughter. Lafayette assured his wife that his injury was "only a flesh wound, touching neither bone nor nerves. The surgeons are astonished at the rapidity with which it heals, and fall into ecstasies every time it is dressed, pretending it is the loveliest thing in the world. For myself, I find it very dirty, very much of a bore, and quite painful enough; but in truth, if a man wanted a wound merely for diversion's sake he could not do better than come and examine mine, with a view to copying it. There, dear heart, is the true history of this thing that I give myself airs about and pompously call 'my wound' in order to appear interesting." [Pg 81]X LETTERS Lafayette had plenty of time for thought as he lay in his neat room, waited upon by the wife of the chief farmer of the Bethlehem Society and her daughter, Lissel. Much of the time was spent in wondering about Adrienne, of whom as yet he had received news only once. As this was brought him by Count Pulaski, who left Paris before the birth of the expected child, Lafayette did not know whether his new baby was a boy or a girl, whether it had been born alive or dead, or how his wife had come through the ordeal. He could only send her long letters at every opportunity, well knowing "that King George might receive some of them instead." In these he sent messages to many French friends, not forgetting his old tutor, the Abbé Feyon, but he did not enlarge upon all phases of his American Life. "At present I am in the solitude of Bethlehem, about which the Abbé Raynal has so much to say," he told her. "This community is really touching and very interesting. We will talk about it after I return, when I mean to bore every one I love, you, consequently, most of all, with stories of my travels." He did not [Pg 82]think it wise to refer in letters to one amusing phase of the situation in which he found himself at Bethlehem--the visits paid him by influential members of the Moravian brotherhood, who took a deep interest in his spiritual welfare and tried their best to convert him from a warrior into a pacifist.