battle for freedom that nothing is stolen and that everybody keeps his little property. The great army of public order, as Casimir Périer called the National Guard, the well-fed heroes in great bearskin caps into which small shopmen's heads are stuck, are drunk with delight when they speak of Lafayette, their old general, their Napoleon of peace. Truly he is the Napoleon of the small citizens, of those brave folk who are bien solvables,—good for their money—those uncle tailors and cousin glovemakers who are indeed too busy by day to think of Lafayette, but who praise him afterwards in the evening with double enthusiasm, so that one may say that it is about 11 P.M., when the shops are shut, that his fame is in full bloom.
I have just before used the word "master of ceremonies." I now recall that Wolfgang Menzel has in his witty trifling called Lafayette a master of ceremonies to Liberty.[1] This was when
- ↑ It was the most natural thing in the world that the public should have this impression. Could I have remembered what occurred when I was an infant in arms, I too should be justified in entertaining it. I was one month old, and, as General Lafayette was riding by en grande procession, my nurse held me up at the window, declaring that I too should see the great man. And the great man seeing this, with a smile, and some remark which is not recorded, courteously bowed to me. He was, indeed, the first person who ever paid me this formal compliment! As a boy, Lafayette seems to me from pictures as
