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conspirators and threw them in irons in solitary dungeon cells at Olmütz. Believing they were part of an international political plot, the humiliated prison commander confronted Lafayette angrily and pledged that the two young men “will be hanged before your window, and I shall take pleasure in serving them ashangman.” They were, in fact, sentenced to six months of hard labor and released. 16
    On January 22, 1795, after sixteen months’ imprisonment without formal charges or trial, Adrienne Lafayette walked out the prison gates in Paris, firmly resolved to flee with her family to America’s tranquil shores and escape forever the madness and savagery of France. She determined to smuggle George to his godfather in America immediately, to isolate him from his father’s enemies. She would then go to Austria with her daughters and remain with Lafayette until his release permitted them to join their son. She went directly to the Monroe house on the rue de Clichy and asked his help in getting passports for her and the children. Six days later, Frestel arrived with fourteen-year-old George-Washington Lafayette, and a few weeks later, Monroe obtained government counterstamps on their passports for them to go to America, with the boy traveling as “George Motier.” Adrienne gave Frestel a letter for President Washington written in French, which she hoped the American president would be able to read and understand:
    Monsieur
,
    Je vous envoie mon fils avec une confiance
. . .
    [Sir, I send you my son. . . . It is with deep and sincere confidence that I entrust this dear child to the protection of the United States (which he has long regarded as his second country and which I have long regarded as our sanctuary), and to the particular protection of their president, whose feelings towards the boy’s father I well know.
    [The bearer of this letter, sir, has, during our troubles, been our support, our resource, our consolation, my son’s guide. I want him to continue in that role. . . . I want them to remain inseparable until the day we have the joy of reuniting in the land of liberty. I owe my own life and those of my children to this man’s generous attention. . . .
    [My wish is for my son to live in obscurity in America; that he resume the studies that three years of misfortune have interrupted, and that far from lands that might crush his spirit or arouse his violent indignation, he can work to fulfill the responsibilities of a citizen of the United States. . . .
    [I will say nothing here about my own circumstances, nor those of one for whom I feel far greater concern than I do for myself. I leave it to the friend who will present this letter to you to express the feelings of a heart which has suffered too much to be conscious of anything but gratitude, of which I owe much to Mr. Monroe. . . .
    [I beg you, Monsieur Washington, to accept my deepest sense of obligation, confidence, respect and devotion.]
    As she had done since her husband’s imprisonment, she signed it defiantly “Noailles Lafayette,” to display proudly the two old noble names she bore. 17
    After a heartbreaking separation from her son, Adrienne went to Chavaniac to find her daughters and Lafayette’s elderly aunt. To ensure her aunt a safe haven, she again drew, albeit reluctantly, on the Morris account to repurchase the château from the government. “It is true,” she wrote to the American, “that this is a tiny obligation in comparison to the one I owe you for my very life, but permit me to acknowledge both debts, which I will always remember with feelings of warmth and gratitude.” 18
    When Adrienne returned to Paris, the business and financial leaders who had survived the Robespierre massacres had seized the reins of government and written a new constitution that replaced Robespierre’s “people’s republic” with a “bourgeois republic.” They restricted voting to taxpaying business and property owners and replaced the Declaration of the