When he joined the nobles of Brittany, in 1788, in their movement against the government, the queen impatiently asked him why he, who was from Auvergne, meddled with the affairs of the Bretons. “I am a Breton, Madam,” replied La Fayette, “just as your Majesty is of the house of Hapsburg.” As La Fayette’s mother was from Brittany, so the queen was descended from the house of Hapsburg by the female line. None of the speeches pronounced by La Fayette in the Chamber of Deputies were prepared. His extempore addresses were eloquent, dignified, and clear. His language was persuasive and pleasing, and his speeches were intelligible to all classes, on account of their simplicity and the directness of their appeal. A friend of La Fayette one day overheard the conversation of several French artisans, who were discussing in the street the merits of the articles in a newspaper they were reading, and after criticising with warmth many of the writers, the leader exclaimed, “Come, this man La Fayette at least speaks French: we can understand what he wishes to say.” The English language was as familiar to La Fayette as the French, and he wrote both with great facility. His style was simple, concise, and clear-cut, forceful and elevated; his ideas were well defined, his principles and opinions decided and frankly avowed. Regarding the English correspondence of La Fayette with his friend Masclet, an Englishman thus comments:— “La Fayette has happily avoided the two principal dangers to which the majority of those who attempt to write in a foreign language are exposed. His style is as free from servile imitation as from grammatical errors or faults of idiom: in a word, it is peculiar to himself; it displays the man, though under another costume. It is simple without meanness, concise without obscurity, dignified without affectation; and often contains those happy turns of expression which infuse such a charm into letters written in French. Scarcely ever does it contain one of those little particles which betray the foreign origin of the writer. His letters, it is true, present some inversions not authorized perhaps by modern custom, but by no means at variance with the genius of the language. On the contrary, they establish a sort of link between the writer and the old English authors. Such inversions are admirable for their delicacy and _naïveté_; without shocking the ear, or proving injurious to clearness of expression, they arrest the attention of the reader, deck themselves, as it were, in the smile resulting from his agreeable surprise, and prevent monotony of style. La Fayette writes English with much facility. His letters present no trace of painful effort or labored composition. He seems never to hesitate in his choice of a suitable word or turn of expression, though he sometimes forgets that the English language can with difficulty bend to that nervous and even elliptic concision of which a skilful French writer often avails