Page:Statement of the attempted rescue of General Lafayette from Olmutz.djvu/49

 probably have been very different, as it was known the Emperor was displeased with so lenient a decree; and Mr. Huger said it then made him shudder, after near thirty years of happy home life, to hear from General Lafayette how imminent was the fate he had so feared for them. He told, that they would probably have been doomed to imprisonment for life, known only to their jailors or keepers by a sign or a number, and thus their very names be erased from the world, making it impossible for their friends ever to trace them. They would have been taken at night, closely guarded, from one prison to another in the Austrian dominions, and so have passed the remainder of their hopeless lives.

Col. Huger, by request of General Lafayette, accompanied him and several of his friends to Yorktown, where a public reception was given him, to commemorate his last military service on our shores.

In the Spring of the next year Col. Huger re-joined General Lafayette in Columbia, and accompanied him to Charleston, where he, his son George Washington, and his friend Mr. LeVasseur, became the guests of the city. Apartments were furnished for them in St. Andrew’s Hall, where they were handsomely