to hold up the king’s hands and strengthen his authority.  It was almost amusing to note the consternation his views caused among those who, knowing him to be a republican of republicans, a citizen of that country which had so lately and so gloriously won its civil liberty, had expected far different things from him.  Indeed, he ran foul of many of the noblesse, with whom ’twas the fashion to be republicans of the first feather, and of none more completely than Monsieur le Marquis de Lafayette.

Monsieur de Lafayette, who had got himself elected from the noblesse in Auvergne, had come back to town in March and was a frequent caller at the Legation, having there a warm friend and ally in Mr. Jefferson.  He was unaffectedly glad to see Calvert after such a lapse of time and to meet again Mr. Morris, whom he had also known in America.  His admiration and respect for Mr. Morris’s qualities were very great, and it was therefore with no little mortification and uneasiness that he noted that gentleman’s disapprobation of the trend of public affairs and his own course of action.  Indeed, Mr. Morris was seriously alarmed lest the glory which the young Marquis had won in America should be dimmed by his career in his own country.  Believing in his high-mindedness and patriotism, he yet questioned his political astuteness and his ability to guide the forces which he had so powerfully helped to set in motion by his call for the States-General.  Fully alive to his great qualities, he yet deplored a certain indecision of character and an evident thirst for fame.

Something of all this Mr. Morris expressed to Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Calvert one evening when the Marquis had retired after an hour’s animated conversation on the all-engrossing subject of politics, during which he had given the three gentlemen an account of his campaign in Auvergne.  But Mr. Jefferson, being in entire sympathy with Lafayette’s ideas, could not agree at all with Mr. Morris’s estimate of him and would listen to no strictures on him, except, indeed, the imputation of ambition, which Mr. Jefferson acknowledged amounted to “a canine thirst for fame,” as he himself wrote General Washington.  Though Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Morris differed so widely respecting the Marquis’s genius, Mr. Morris still clung to his opinion, so that Madame de Lafayette, with wifely jealousy and feminine intuition, perceiving something of his mental attitude toward her husband, received him but coldly when he called with Calvert to pay his respects at the hotel on the Quai du Louvre.  So marked was the disapproval of her manner, that Mr. Morris, being both amused and annoyed, could not forbear recounting his reception to Mr. Jefferson, who enjoyed a good laugh at his expense and, as it seemed to Calvert, took a certain satisfaction in his rebuff.