"Why, that is Madame de ----, a grand-daughter of General Lafayette."

I can hardly account, at this quiet moment, for the sudden impulse that
seized me; but resist it I could not; and walking directly up to her, I
made my lowest bow, and, without giving her time to look me well in
the face, repeated, with all the gravity I could command, "_Calypso ne
pouvait se consoler du départ d'Ulysse_."

"O! Monsieur Greene," said she, holding out both her hands, "it must be
you!"


THE GENERAL.


General Lafayette had just entered his seventy-first year. In his
childhood he had been troubled by a weakness of the chest which gave his
friends some anxiety. But his constitution was naturally good, and air,
exercise, and exposure gradually wore away every trace of his original
debility. In person he was tall and strongly built, with broad
shoulders, large limbs, and a general air of strength, which was rather
increased than diminished by an evident tending towards corpulency.
While still a young man, his right leg--the same, I believe, that had
been wounded in rallying our broken troops at the Brandywine--was
fractured by a fall on the ice, leaving him lame for the rest of his
days. This did not prevent him, however, from walking about his farm,
though it cut him off from the use of the saddle, and gave a halt to his
gait, which but for his dignity of carriage would have approached to
awkwardness. Indeed, he had more dignity of bearing than any man I ever
saw. And it was not merely the dignity of self-possession, which early