At this point, however, Gouverneur Morris, the Minister of the United States, stepped upon the scene. He had already advanced Madame Lafayette large sums of money, when her property had been confiscated; now when he heard that she was to be condemned to the guillotine by the butchers of the Revolution he immediately bearded those butchers in their den. He wrote to the authorities, the Committee of Safety, as the officials grotesquely called it, and told them that the execution of Madame Lafayette would make a very bad impression in America.
The Committee of Safety were not disposed to listen to reason from any quarter. Yet, when they heard Gouverneur Morris say, “If you kill the wife of Lafayette all the enemies of the Republic and of popular liberty will rejoice; you will make America hostile, and justify England in her slanders against you,” they hesitated and postponed ordering her execution. But, because of his protests against such violent acts of the Reign of Terror, Gouverneur Morris was sent back to America, on the ground that he had too much sympathy with the victims of “liberty!”
Madame Lafayette was brought into court, and the Committee of Safety did its best to insult her. Said the Chief Commissioner, “I have old scores against you. I detest you, your husband, and your name!”
Madame Lafayette answered him fearlessly, “I shall always defend my husband; and as for a name--there is no wrong in that.”
“You are insolent!” shouted the Commissioner, and was about to order her execution when he remembered Morris’s words and sent her back to her prison instead.
With her husband in prison in Austria, her young children left unprotected and far away from her, the plight of Madame Lafayette was hard indeed. But she was very brave, though she knew that any day might take her to the scaffold. Almost all the old nobility were brave. While Robespierre and his rabble made liberty and justice a mockery the prisoners maintained their old contempt for their jailers and held their heads as high as in the old days when they had taken their pleasure at Versailles.
On July 22, 1794, Madame Lafayette’s grandmother, the Maréchale de Noailles, her mother, the Duchess d’Ayen, and her sister, the Vicomtesse de Noailles, were beheaded by the guillotine, victims of the popular rage against all aristocrats. A few days later the Reign of Terror came to a sudden end, the prey of the very excesses it had committed.