Correspondance inédite de La Fayette : lettres de prison, lettres d'exil (1793-1801)

CORRESPONDANCE INÉDITE 325

While our captivity has been honoured with so many testimonies of sympathizing benevolence from the friends of liberty, I am highly sensible of the constant and precious interest which the people of the United States has deigned to take in our behalf, of the early and repeated exertions of their government at home and representatives abroad, partieularly in this place ; and among these obligations, let me pay à due and sacred homage to a generous son of America, the heroie Huger, who, as well as his worthy companion Bollmann, have by their magnanimity in their attempt and in their sufferings deserved universal admiration and are entitled to my boundless gratitude. In the honourable marks of your approbation for my conduct, I find those principles of liberty and legal order which have so happily prevailed in our American revolution, and which, I hope, shall ever ensure the welfare of the United States. Permit me, gentlemen, in the name of my friends Latour-Maubourg and Pusy and myself, most gratefully to present our acknowledgments for your good wishes and your kind invitation to these fortunate shores, the remembrance of which fills my mind with the most pleasing emotions and alively impatience to revise them. And altho’ I want adequate words to express the sentiments of gratitude and respect which bind me to you, I request you will kindly receive the assurance that they shall for ever be engraved in my heart.

TRADUCTION

Messieurs, c’est avec un inexprimable plaisir que je me trouve encore une fois favorisé par la vue d’amis et compatriotes américains; comment pourrais-