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Then she stood amazed. What had come over Adrienne? She held herself erect, her eyes were dry, and she said proudly: “If my husband feels that way, it is right and best for him to go to America, and we must do all we can to make the parting easy for him. It is he who is going to leave those who are dearest to him, for the sake of a noble cause.”

Brave girl! Not once after that did she allow her own feelings to check the ardour of Lafayette’s patriotism, not once did she stay her hand in her careful preparation for his departure, although every article laid aside for his use was moistened by her unseen tears, while he was busy with the interesting and enormously expensive work of chartering and fitting up a ship, which Adrienne named The Victory, in which he was to make his trip across the ocean.

The preparations were completed and the day had come for his going. Slight, beautiful; too proud to show her emotion, thinking more of him than of herself, Adrienne, not yet eighteen years old, bade her husband farewell–saw him embark for a strange land, for the sake of a cause as dangerous as it was alluring to the young patriot, and went back to her quiet routine of home duties and regular occupations without one murmur.

To her family and her friends she showed little of what she felt, although many a night she did not even lie down, but sat at her desk, pouring out her heart to the dear one tossing on a perilous sea, in letters which though daily sent, never reached the young adventurer, so we must needs imagine her transports of loneliness–her passion of affection, written to ease and comfort and in a measure to fit her to take up the next day’s duties calmly.

Lafayette’s letters to her had a better fate than hers to him, and one day when she least expected it, a precious packet lay in Adrienne’s hands. Wild with excitement at sight of the familiar writing, she held it for a long time unopened, then fled to the solitude of her own room to read its contents with no eye watching her joy.

The letter was full of tender interest in her health, and of repetitions of undying affection which warmed the heart so starved for them. Written on board The Victory, May 30, 1777, it said: “I ought to have landed by this time, but the winds have been most provokingly contrary. When I am once more on shore I shall learn many interesting things concerning the new country I am seeking. Do not fancy that I shall incur any real danger by the occupations I am undertaking. The service will be very different from the one I must have performed if I had been, for example, a colonel in the French army. My attendance will only be required in the council. To prove that I do not wish to deceive you, I will acknowledge that we are at this moment exposed to some danger from the risk of being attacked by English vessels, and that my ship is not of sufficient force for defence. But when I have once landed I shall be in perfect safety. I will not write you a journal of my voyage. Days succeed each other, and what is worse, resemble each other. Always sky, always water, and the next day a repetition of the same thing. We have seen to-day several kinds of birds which announce that we are not very far from shore.”

Fifteen days later there was a second letter, and then they arrived with some degree of regularity to cheer lonely little Adrienne, watching, waiting, and living on their coming. It was a time fraught with vital issues in the American Colonies. Though to Lafayette there was somewhat of disillusion in finding the American troops not like the dashing, brilliantly uniformed ones of his own country, but merely a great army of undisciplined, half-ragged soldiers, united only in the flaming desire to acquire liberty for their beloved land at all hazards, yet soon the young foreigner lost sight of all but their patriotism, and his letters show how he too had become heart and soul inflamed by the same spirit. Only fragments of the letters can be given here, but one can picture the young wife, with her baby in her arms, in the home of her childhood, devouring with breathless interest the story of her adventurer in a strange land. On June 15th Lafayette writes: