Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/139

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and next that the great walls of the convent arise, shutting out the world from the still, cloistered life within. Many men eminent in the order have been part of the place—none of them more interesting, perhaps, than Father John Du Bois, who came thither in 1792. He was an émigré of the French Revolution, in which his old classmates at the College of Louis-le-Grand, Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre, figured so largely, and he afterwards wore a mitre.

In 1824, Lafayette included Frederick in his great tour of rejoicing, and was accorded the usual welcoming parades, speeches, dinner and ball. Only a few years ago a beautiful, blind old lady, who had been a beautiful, bright-eyed young wife, used to tell of her noble guest. She was a favorite granddaughter of Governor Johnson, and in her girlhood had helped Louisa Johnson, the wife of John Quincy Adams, to dispense the unpretentious hospitality of the White House. Mr. Adams, she said, got up and built his hearth-fire of a morning himself! It was a chapter from an old romance to listen to her kindly talk of "the old times and the days that were before us," and when she "went away," almost the last of the perfect breeding