Letter #6
To: M. Berniche
From: Lafayette
Date: November 20, 1827
In French
La Grange 20 November 1827
Your letter dated on the 13th of this month, addressed to Paris, reached
me my dear Constituent the night before last in Coulommiers. I am very
touched by the feelings you expressed. At the election before last your
letter was the first one to reach me. I then had no reason to wish a seat
in the House of Parliament, except for the honor and the pleasure of representing
the District of Meaux. But the reason was more than sufficient to accept
with gratitude and devotion a canditature in which I felt all the responsibilities.
This is what I told my former colleague when he came to see me and it was
more in his interest than in mine that I advised him, in a friendly manner,
to make a recruitment of the liberal voters between he and I, avoiding
in all matters, of becoming a ministerial candidate. I was then extremely
touched by your perseverance in my favor. Then it seemed to me more useful
to be called at the House of Parliament; I only wanted to depend on the
goodwill of the Meaux voters and as you can see my trust was in good hands.
If I have been upset by the new opposition of your brother-in-law it is
because I wanted an election by an absolute majority of liberals. You knew
that I had always wished his nomination in the department of Oise, and
I always assured that he would continue to vote with us at the House of
Parliament. As far as your personal behavior, my dear Constituent, I can
only thank you for the efforts you made with your brother-in-law to encourage
my former colleague in not putting his candidacy at the College of Meaux,
and since you changed your vote at the last election, due to personal reasons
which you gave me in details, with complete trust, I wish to thank you,
also without constituting myself to judge, to have done right by explaining
all this to me. I can imagine the position in which you found yourself
in regards to your brother-in-law with all the painful fraternal anxieties
in which I am taking part. Please accept all my wishes and my sentiments
in the family feud. Let us be happy together about this fanatic election
and of all the things that will derive from it. Let me renew my sincere
attachment to you.
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Lafayette Collection, Davis Memorial Library
Fayetteville, North Carolina
March 28, 2001