Your desire to know more of the private life of this extraordinary man,
is quite natural; but he has been so long before the public, that it is
not easy to say anything new. I may, however, give you a trait or two,
to amuse you.

I have seen more of him this winter than the last, owing to the
circumstance of a committee of Americans, that have been appointed to
administer succour to the exiled Poles, meeting weekly at my house, and
it is rare indeed that he is not present on these benevolent occasions.
He has discontinued his own soirées, too; and, having fewer demands on
his time, through official avocations, I gain admittance to him during
his simple and quiet dinners, whenever it is asked.

These dinners, indeed, are our usual hours of meeting, for the
occupations of the General, in the Chamber, usually keep him engaged in
the morning; nor am I commonly at leisure, myself, until about this hour
of the day. In Paris, every one dines, nominally, at six; but the
deputies being often detained a little later, whenever I wish to see
him, I hurry from my own table, and generally reach the Rue d'Anjou in
sufficient season to find him still at his.

On quitting the Hôtel de l'Etat Major, after being dismissed so
unceremoniously from the command of the National Guard, Lafayette
returned to his own neat but simple lodgings in the Rue d'Anjou. The
hotel, itself, is one of some pretensions, but his apartments, though
quite sufficient for a single person, are not among the best it
contains, lying on the street, which is rarely or never the case with
the principal rooms. The passage to them communicates with the great
staircase, and the door is one of those simple, retired entrances that,
in Paris, so frequently open on the abodes of some of the most