"Welcome!" the hills echoed. "Vive Lafayette!"
The Marquis lifted his eyes,—white stone houses gay with gardens and clusters of verdure arose before him in a town of five thousand inhabitants. Below stood the massive stone forts of the Spanish time, and on the brow of the bluff frowned the old round tower, the last fading relic of feudalism in North America.
Every eye was fixed upon the honoured guest. A few were there who could recall the pride of Lafayette in his American troops, with their helmets and flowing crests and the sabres he himself had brought from France. The banquet, the toasts, the ball, all these have passed into tradition.
The Marquis visited Clark's cabinet of Indian curios.
"I present you this historic cloak of an Indian chief," said the General, offering a robe like a Russian great coat.
In turn, Lafayette presented his mess chest, carried through the Revolution, and placed on the Governor's finger a ring of his hair. Later Clark sent him the live cub of a grizzly bear, that grew to be a wonder in the Jardin des Plantes of Paris.
"And your great brother, George Rogers Clark?" inquired the Marquis.
"He died seven years ago at Louisville," answered the Governor.
"In securing the liberties of this country I esteem him second only to Washington," said Lafayette.
"Those thieving Osages have taken six more of my horses," complained Chouteau the next morning at the office of Governor Clark.
"And four blankets and three axes of me," added Baptiste Dardenne.
"Worse yet, they have stolen my great-coat and razor case," said Manuel Roderique.
Two thousand dollars' worth of claims were paid in that summer of 1825.
"We must get them out of the way," persisted the exasperated whites.
"Acts and acts of Congress regulating trade and int
