The innkeeper then presented his wife and son, a young boy about three or four years old. The father placed his son’s small hand on Lafayette’s hand. The boy said, “General Lafayette, I thank you for the freedom that you have won for my father, my mother, for me and my country.” Lafayette couldn’t conceal his emotion and embraced the “child tenderly.” Lafayette then “escaped into his carriage, where the blessings of this family, which was free and so worthy of being free, accompanied him.”
