#pg. 159

     There were no jokes or any hint of failure for Lafayette at the camp--only sympathy and a warm show of liking. Washington was careful to see to that, though it didn’t need much doing, what with the way the camp had taken the marquis to its heart before he’d been sent on his goose chase to Albany. The headquarters staff were plainly sorry for him, and, off duty, companionable; the general officers soothed him; and Dan Morgan blasphemed mightily about his treatment at Gates’s hands. In such an atmosphere, Lafayette let his anger simmer down.

     Martha accepted him at once. His manners, his gay talk, his young fire, and his courtliness appealed to her; and as a woman she was fascinated by the background of dazzle and luxury and European culture against which the marquis moved.

     “To think, George,” she said, “he’s actually walked beside the fountains of Versailles. And listened to the best minds of France. And chatted with royal ministers and with the king. And carries it all so modestly.”

     “Modestly, I’d say, because he sees no reason to boast to us,” Washington said. “He regards such things as natural. But he is attractively unaffected.”

     “I suppose that is the word for him,” Martha said, though she was conscious, within herself, that she might have chosen some less pallid word for this boy who carried with him the spark and flare of the world’s most resplendent court.

     “Yes, unaffected,” she said. “And truly sweet. As a female calls a man sweet, George, without any--any implications.” She blushed, and hurried on. “Besides, he reveres you, and anyone who reveres you is someone I’m compelled to be fond of.”

     So Lafayette stayed on. And presently was riding with Washington two miles out along the road from the Valley Forge that led toward Philadelphia. Troops were lined along the route, the Continentals, and they looked smarter now, in the spring, for the training von Steuben had hammered into them, and the bands--such as they were--made music.

     For General Lee was rejoining the army. Americans in Rhode Island had captured an enemy major general and Lee was being exchanged for him.