Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/233

Rh which, failing that, has overflowed in the form of a revolution on our own monarchy, and has then inundated Europe."

This speech made him think of the young nobles, who had overrun America like the sheep of Panurge, without, however, reducing the surplus population of France, and Colonel Hamilton could not help laughing as he replied:

"You are right. I am speaking in opposition to our own interests, for it is to the French arms that we owe our independence, but your Government would perhaps have done better if it had sent us your lower orders instead of your upper."

I found at Philadelphia, my friend De la Colombe, who, like me, was aide-de-camp to M. de la Fayette during the American War, but with this difference, that when our civil dissensions broke out, he still remained with the general.

"You were wrong, my friend," he said to me, "not perhaps in not casting in your lot with ours, but in refusing on principle to have any communication with us. I might perhaps have been able to dissipate