“My mother deeply felt the grief of being unable to alleviate the sufferings of her companions in captivity. But as for herself, no words could express her happiness. You can only imagine it by remembering what was the ruling passion of her life from the age of fourteen, and how much she had gone through from frequent separations and incessant labors which had so constantly called my father from his home, as from the great dangers to which he had been exposed. She had passed three horrible years almost without a hope of ever seeing him again. At last she possessed that happiness which, during all her life, she had been longing for; each day she beheld the influence of her presence on my father’s health, and the solace she afforded him; she was surprised at feeling so happy, and reproached herself for being satisfied with her situation while my father was still a prisoner. She was allowed now and then to write, under the eyes of the officer on duty, short unsealed letters to the banker, who remitted the money necessary for our food. Permission to write to her son was refused, in order that no intelligence from the prison of Olmütz should reach the United States. It was with a toothpick and a small piece of India ink that she wrote my grandmother’s life on the margins of the engravings of a volume of Buffon. “As might have been expected, my mother’s health had suffered much. Never did she show more meritorious submission to my father’s wishes than when she determined to write to the emperor for permission to go and consult the doctors at Vienna. At the end of seven weeks the commander of Olmütz came to intimate a verbal refusal to leave the prison unless she gave up all hopes of returning. He asked at the same time for a written answer. It was as follows:— “‘The commander of Olmütz having declared to me that, on my request to go for a week to Vienna in order to consult the doctors, his Imperial Majesty does not permit me under any pretence whatever to go to Vienna, and only allows me to leave this prison on condition never to enter it again, I have the honor here to renew my answer. It was my duty towards my family and friends to try and obtain the advice necessary for my health, but they well know that I cannot accept the conditions offered to me. I cannot forget that while we were both on the eve of perishing, I through the tyranny of Robespierre, M. de La Fayette through the physical and moral sufferings of his captivity, I was neither allowed to receive any accounts of him, nor to let him know that his children and I were still alive. I shall not expose myself to the horrors of another separation. “‘Therefore, whatever may be the state of my health, or the hardships of this abode for my daughters, we shall all three take advantage of his Imperial Majesty’s goodness in allowing us to share this captivity in all its details. NOAILLES LA FAYETTE.’