“You must become a prattler also, my love, and say many things for me to Henriette—my poor little Henriette! embrace her a thousand times; talk of me to her, but do not tell her all I deserve to suffer: my punishment will be, not to be recognized by her on my arrival; that is the penance Henriette will impose upon me.” In the life of Madame de La Fayette, written by her daughter, Madame de Lasteyrie, this touching account is given of La Fayette’s wife at this time. “In the month of April, 1777, my father carried out his plan of going to America. It is easy to judge of my mother’s grief on receiving tidings so new, so unexpected, and so terrible. In addition to all she was herself suffering; she had the pain of witnessing my grandfather’s anger. ‘The French ladies,’ Lord Stomont, the English ambassador, wrote to his government, ‘blame M. de La Fayette’s family, for having tried to stop him in so noble an enterprise. If the Duc d’Ayen,’ one of them said, ‘crosses such a son-in-law in such an attempt, he must not hope to find husbands for his other daughters.’ “My mother felt that the more she excited pity, the more my father would be censured. All her endeavors were then to conceal the tortures of her heart, preferring to be thought childish or indifferent to bringing down greater blame on his behavior. My mother found much comfort in the kindness shown to her by my grandmother, whose noble mind made her appreciate each detail of her son-in-law’s conduct. “It was with truly maternal tenderness that she broke to her daughter the different accounts of my father’s departure, of his arrest, of his return to Bordeaux, and of his ultimate embarkation at the Port du Passage in Spain. “The first accounts of my father’s arrival in America reached my mother a month after the birth of my sister Anastasie. His charming letters, the accounts of his deeds, the success he had already achieved, caused her a delight mingled with apprehensions for the dangers of war. The news of my father having been wounded at the battle of Brandywine reached my mother’s ears, but still more alarming reports were hidden from her.” After being wounded at Brandywine, La Fayette heard of the birth of his second daughter, Anastasie. He thus tenderly wrote to his adored wife:— “How happy your safety has made me. Dearest heart, I must speak of it all through my letter, for I can think of nothing else. What rapture to embrace you all,—the mother and the two little girls,—to make them intercede with you for their truant father.” Concerning this first visit of La Fayette to America Madame de La Fayette herself thus writes:—