He is a French aristocrat who created a stir in America as a precocious teenager, and then returned decades later to the United States to be celebrated in New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston.

The Marquis de Lafayette? Yes, of course. But that was then. This time, it is his great-great-great grandson.

Arnaud Meunier du Houssoy arrived in New York from Paris on Saturday to be celebrated at events in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and the nation's capital to mark a season of Lafayette commemorations.

It is the 250th anniversary year of the birth of the Revolutionary War general, and a major new exhibition — "French Founding Father: Lafayette's Return to Washington's America" — recently opened at the New-York Historical Society. Next month there will be a multimillion-dollar auction of a historic gold medal of the Society of the Cincinnati: an enameled patriotic badge created for George Washington that was presented to Lafayette in 1824 after Washington's death.

[Read the rest of the story here]