During the entire month of May Lafayette and his army remained inactive at Maubeuge awaiting orders which the distracted ministers at Paris were incapable of giving.  ’Twas a pretty little place near the Belgian frontier, lying on both sides of the Sambre, and which had been ceded to France by the treaty of Nymwegen.  Mr. Calvert spent much of his leisure time—­of which he had more than enough—­admiring and studying the fortifications of this town, which had been engineered by the great Vauban.  Much of it he also spent with Lafayette, who, in the intervals of disciplining his troops and attending to his increased military duties—­Rochambeau’s command had been divided between himself and Luckner—­conversed freely with his young aide-de-camp.  Sometimes, too, at Lafayette’s urgent request, Calvert would sing as he had used to do around the camp-fires in the Virginia campaign.  During those days and evenings of inactive and anxious waiting, the old friendship between the two was renewed.  Lafayette had heard of Calvert’s marriage through Mr. Morris and, with the utmost delicacy, touched upon the subject.  Calvert told him frankly as much of the story as he intended to reveal to anyone, and this confidence became another bond of friendship between them.  The years of separation and disagreement somehow melted away.  The Lafayette of Maubeuge was like the Lafayette whom Calvert had first known and admired; he noticed how much of his rabid republicanism had vanished—­indeed, Lafayette himself owned as much, for if he was impetuous and extreme, he was also courageous and was not afraid or ashamed to confess his faults.

“I have learned much,” he said to Calvert one evening when they were alone in the General’s quarters, “and am beginning to have radically different opinions upon some subjects from those I entertained but a short while ago.  Sometimes I ask myself if my call for the States-General did not open for France a Pandora’s box of evils.  What has become of all my efforts?” he said, pushing away a map of the Austrian Netherlands which they had been studying together and beginning to pace the room agitatedly.  “Instead of the wise ministers prevailing at Paris, a horde of mad, insensate creatures are ruling the Assembly, the city, the whole country!  If only there were some man courageous enough to defy the Jacobins and their power—­to meet them on their own ground and conquer them!  What can I do at this distance, overwhelmed with military duties, restricted by my official position?  I have been thinking of addressing a letter to the Assembly,” he went on, suddenly turning to Calvert, “a letter of warning against the Jacobin power, of reproach that they should be ruled by that ignoble faction, or remonstrance against their unwarrantable proceedings, and as soon as I can find the time to write such a letter, I shall do so, and despatch it to Paris by my secretary, let the consequences be what they may.”

This design was not accomplished until the middle of June, for, at the beginning of the month, a number of skirmishes and night attacks took place between the Austrians, who had encamped near Maubeuge, and Lafayette’s troops, and the General was too much occupied with the military situation to busy himself with affairs at Paris.  These attacks culminated in a bloody and almost disastrous engagement for the patriot army on the 11th of June.