When it is needed, when one of the great questions of humanity is discussed, then Lafayette ever rises, eager for strife as a youth. Only the body is weak and tottering, broken by age and the battles of his time, like a hacked and dented old iron armor, and it is touching when he totters under it to the tribune and has reached his old post, to see how he draws a deep breath and smiles. This smile, his delivery, and the whole being of the man while speaking on the tribune, are indescribable. There is in it all so much that is winsome and yet so much delicate irony, that one is enchained as by a marvelous curiosity, a sweet, strange enigma. We know not if these are the refined manners of a French marquis or the straightforward simplicity of an American citizen. All that is best in the _ancien régime_, the chivalresque courtesy and tact, are here wondrously fused with what is best in the modern _bourgeoisie_, love of equality, simplicity, and honesty. Nothing is more interesting than when mention is made, in the Chamber, of the first days of the Revolution, and some one in _doctrinaire_ fashion tears some historical fact from its true connection and turns it to his own account in speech. Then Lafayette destroys with a few words the erroneous deduction by illustrating or correcting the true sense of such an event by citing the circumstances relating to it. Even Thiers must in such a case strike sail, and the great historiographer of the Revolution bows before the outburst of its great and living monument, General Lafayette. There sits in the Chamber, just before the tribune a very old man, with long silvery hair falling over his black clothing. His body is girted with a very broad tricolored scarf; he is the old messenger who has always filled that office in the Chamber since the beginning of the Revolution, and who in this post has witnessed the momentous events of the world's history from the days of the first National Assembly till the _juste milieu_. I am told that he often speaks of Robespierre, whom he calls _le bon Monsieur Robespierre_. During the Restoration the old man suffered from colic, but since he has wound the tricolored scarf round his waist he finds himself well again. His only trouble now, in the dull and lazy times of the _juste milieu_, is drowsiness. I once even saw him fall asleep while Mauguin was speaking. Indeed, the man has, doubtless, in his time heard better than Mauguin, who is, however, one of the best orators of the Opposition, though he is not found to be very startling or effective by one _qui a beaucoup connu ce bon Monsieur de Robespierre_. But when Lafayette speaks, then the old messenger awakes from his twilight drowsiness, he seems to be aroused like an old war-horse of hussars when he hears the sound of a trumpet--there rise within him sweet memories of youth, and he nods delightedly with his silver-white head. * * * * * THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL[58] (1833-35)