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I will take advantage of the month of September, the most favourable time, to send him a still larger quantity. Do not forget me to Madame la Marechale de Noailles; embrace my sisters a thousand and a thousand times. If you see the Chevalier de Chastellux, present to him my compliments and assurances of affection. But what shall I say to you, my love?
"These are in English I shall have to get Madame de Chastellux to translate them for me some day," and she folded the paper as if to put it away, but there arose such exclamations of disappointment, such gentle entreaties not to be denied the pleasure of hearing the verses, that she yielded to the clamor and signalled Madame de Chastellux her permission to have them read aloud.
But their food does not prevent them from singing loudly when at work or rowing their boats, and they often reminded me of something the Marquis de Chastellux said one evening at my house about the beginning of the Revolution: "If their bonds are taken off they will be much more unhappy!"
De Rayneval did not exaggerate when he wrote to him, "You will carry with you the affection of all France"; and De Chastellux told the simple truth in the graceful compliment he sent to the old sage after his return home, "When you were here, we had no need to praise the Americans; we had only to say, 'Look! here is their representative." Let us devoutly pray that our ambassadors may not be made use of for the same purpose now!
Soon after he wrote to his friend the Chevalier de Chastellux: "I could not help taking a more extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States and could not but be struck by the immense extent and importance of it, and of the goodness of that Providence which has dealt its favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them.
The Marquis de Chastellux, who visited his camp on the Ramapo River, has left a delightful description of this visit in which he spoke of the fine appearance of the troops as their young commander had drawn them up on a height near his own station. Here, said Chastellux, Lafayette received his guest with more pride than if he had been entertaining at his estates in Auvergne.
The old count of Chastellux was lately dead, and the heir had announced his coming, according to custom, to claim his ecclesiastical privilege. There had been long feud between the houses of Chastellux and Auxerre; but on this happy occasion an offer of peace came with a proposal for the hand of the Lady Ariane.
Coming from a young officer, the member of a profession which Voltaire frankly described as 'very noble, in truth, but slightly barbarous, this criticism was peculiarly striking. A great many years afterwards Voltaire was surprised in the same way, to find that an officer could write such a book as the Félicité Publique of the Marquis de Chastellux.
When he heard him in after years accused of shameless veniality, of trickery, lying, duplicity, even murder, he always remembered that impulsive revelation never repeated of a warped, unhappy childhood, of a perverted destiny. Mr. Morris came to him later as he stood leaning against the wall behind the chair of Madame de Chastellux. "How goes it, Ned?" he asked, half-laughing and stifling a yawn.
"'Signed without distinction of ranks, so that there may be no dissatisfaction: De Vieux-Pont, De la Pailleterie, De Beaufremont, De Latour-du-Pin, De Montauban, Louis de Caumont, Claude de Polignac, Charles de Laval, Antoine de Chastellux, Armand de Richelieu. Where did you fish up all this, you old fox?" "Wait, monseigneur, we have not done yet. Look at this."
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