tight knee-breeches, and muslin wrist-ruffles, walked up to the
table where twenty hussar officers were waiting and with "formal
stiffness pronounced in a loud voice a long prayer in the form,
of a Benedicite." The French officers must have been surprised;
they were not used to simple country manners and to grace before
meat on all occasions, but they were too polite and too well
trained to laugh. "Twenty amens issued at once from the midst of
forty moustaches," says the marquis, and in spite of the fun he
makes of the old Puritan governor's stiff manners, we feel in
reading the story that he fully appreciates his sterling good
qualities.

Some of these pleasure-loving French gentlemen met a strange and
sad fate, years later, in the terrible days of the French
Revolution. The Duke de Lauzun was beheaded in Paris in 1793, his
long and adventurous life "ended with a little spurt of blood
under the knife of the guillotine"; and Lafayette spent five
years in an Austrian prison.

There is another story of old Lebanon which is connected with the
visit of the French soldiers. The French commander-in-chief, the
Count de Rochambeau, had given to Madam Faith Trumbull, the
governor's wife, a beautiful scarlet cloak, and one Sabbath day
she appeared in the governor's pew in the Lebanon meeting-house
wearing the French general's handsome gift. Now, in those hard
times contributions for the army were often collected after
service on Sundays, and the people not only gave money, but
whatever else they could spare, Indian corn, flax, wood, shoes
and stockings, hats and coats. Quietly the governor's wife rose
in her seat and, taking the scarlet cloak from her shoulders,