now disguised as a
courier, mounted one of the horses and rode on ahead, ordering the
relays. When they reached the road which led toward Spain they changed
their course. The officers who had been set to spy upon him, however,
now were giving chase, and at the next inn Lafayette was obliged to hide
in the straw of a stable until the pursuers should pass.

It so happened that he had ridden over that road a little time before,
and the innkeeper's daughter knew him by sight. When he rode into the
courtyard she exclaimed, "There comes the Marquis de Lafayette!" and he
was much alarmed, lest some of the bystanders should give away his
secret. He made them understand, however, that he was traveling in
disguise, so that when the pursuers arrived and asked questions, the
people of the inn all agreed that no such gentleman as Lafayette had
been seen in the neighborhood.

By means of alternate hiding and sudden rapid riding, the Marquis
finally crossed the Spanish border, and reached the little town of
Passage. There, on April 20, 1777, he set sail in a boat happily named
_La Victoire_, heading for North America.

America owes a great deal to this gallant young Frenchman who crossed
the seas to aid the colonies. He was among the first of those
foreigners who showed the colonists that the love of liberty was as wide
as the world. He came when hope was low, and his coming meant much to
the brave men who had to undergo the long, discouraging winter at Valley
Forge, and the days when it seemed as though time would prove them only
rebels and not patriots. He brought ships, and men, and money to aid in
the great cause, but more than all these were his own magnetic
personality and the buoyant spirit that refused to be cast down.

The War of Independence came to an end, and Lafayette returned home.
Trouble was brewing there. The old nobility had grown too overbearing;
the men and women who tilled the soil were considered hardly better than
mere beasts of burden. Such a state could not last, and so the time came
when the mobs of Paris broke into the beautiful gardens of Versailles,
stormed the Palace of the Tuilleries, scattered some of the vain and
foolish old courtiers, but imprisoned many more, and brought to trial
the hapless King Louis and the charming Marie Antoinette.

Lafayette, friend of their early days, stood by them through the height
of the storm, but there was little he could do against the people's
fury. The Revolutio