La Fayette passed untainted through an age of corruption, and was proof against the seductive excesses of the court of Louis XV., and retained his moral integrity in the midst of the temptations and the terrible whirlwinds of political storms which raged with relentless fury during the reign of the unfortunate Louis XVI. To his early avowed principles of liberty and patriotism he was ever true as the needle to the magnet. No emoluments could bribe him to advocate a wrong principle; no terrors could deter him from stanchly and fearlessly upholding what his conscience acknowledged to be the cause of truth and liberty. “La Fayette loved truth above all things, and rejected all that could change or corrupt its nature. Like Epaminondas, he would not have suffered himself, even in joke, to utter the slightest falsehood. He was the mirror of truth, even in the midst of political parties, whose condemnation he pronounced by presenting to them the hideous image of their passions. He thus offended without convincing them, and the mirror, being declared deceitful, was destined to be broken.” He was heard to say: “The court would have accepted me had I been an aristocrat, and the Jacobins, had I been a Jacobin; but, as I wished to side with neither, both united against me.” The following incident is related, illustrative of La Fayette’s generosity:— “On the occasion of his last visit to America, General La Fayette having learned that the family of his old aide-de-camp, Colonel Neville, was in difficulties, before he embarked for France drew a bill of exchange in their favor, on the President of the United States, for the sum of four thousand dollars, and addressed it to the children of M. Neville. It may be easily conceived that the latter declined making use of it; but they keep it as a precious document which reflects equal honor on the memory of their father and on the noble generosity of La Fayette.”