Part 2

Of course, not everybody was corrupt, even at court. There were people who could not possibly be classed as fortune-hunters. Even to these the fact that the young heir was tall and silent and awkward, not especially popular at school, and not likely to shine in a society whose standards were those of dancing-school manners and lively wit, did not weigh for a moment against the solid attraction of his wealth. To fathers and mothers of marriageable daughters both his moral and material qualifications appealed. He was barely fourteen years old when proposals of marriage began to be made in the careful French way, which assumes that matrimony is an affair to be arranged between guardians, instead of being left to the haphazard whim of young people. An early letter of Lafayette's written about this time was partly upon this subject. It might have been penned by a world-wise man of thirty. The Comte de la Rivière appears to have been the person to whom these proposals were first addressed. He, and possibly the Abbé Feyon, discussed them with Lafayette in a business-like way; and the young man, not being in love, either with a maid or with the idea of matrimony, listened without enthusiasm, suggesting that better matches might be found among the beauties of Auvergne. New duties and surroundings engrossed him. He had left Du Plessis for the Military Academy at Versailles, where there was more army and less cloister in his training; where he spent part of his money upon fine horses and [Pg 15]lent them generously to friends; and where, for amusement in his hours of leisure, he could watch the pageant of court life unrolling at the very gates of the academy. Matrimony could wait.

Among those more interested in providing a wife for him than he was in finding one for himself was the lively Duc d'Ayen, a rich and important nobleman, the father of five daughters. The eldest of these was fully a year younger than Lafayette, while the others descended toward babyhood like a flight of steps. Even in that day of youthful marriages it seemed early to begin picking out husbands for them. But there were five, and the duke felt he could not begin better than by securing this long-limbed boy for a son-in-law. He suggested either his eldest daughter, Louise, or the second child, Adrienne, then barely twelve, as a future Marquise de Lafayette. He did not care which was chosen, but of course it must be one of the older girls, since the bridegroom would have to wait too long for the others to grow up. The match was entirely suitable, and was taken under favorable consideration by the bridegroom's family; but when it occurred to the duke to mention the matter to his wife, he found opposition where it was least expected. Madame d'Ayen absolutely refused her consent. These two were quite apt to hold different views. The husband liked the luxury of the court and chuckled over its shams. His wife, on the contrary, was of a most serious turn of mind and had very little sense of humor. The frivolities of court life really shocked her. She looked upon riches as [Pg 16]a burden, and fulfilled the social duties of her position only under protest as part of that burden. The one real joy of her life lay in educating her daughters. She studied the needs of their differing natures. She talked with them much more freely than was then the custom, and did all in her power to make of them women who could live nobly at court and die bravely when and wherever their time came.

She had no fault to find with young Lafayette. Her opposition was a matter of theory and just a little selfish, for her married life had not been happy enough to make her anxious to see her girls become wives of even the best young men. As for this Motier lad, she thought him particularly open to temptation because of his youth and loneliness and great wealth. He had lacked the benefit of a father's training. So, for that matter, had her own children. Their father was almost always away from home.

The duke's airy manner hid a persistent spirit, and, in spite of his worldliness, he esteemed the good character of the boy. The discussion lasted almost a year and developed into the most serious quarrel of their married life. No wonder, under the circumstances, that the duke did not, as his daughter expressed it, "like his home." The little girls knew something was wrong, and shared their mother's unhappiness without guessing the cause. The duke's acquaintances, on the other hand, to whom the cause was no secret, looked upon the contest of wills as a comedy staged for their benefit. One of them said in his hearing that no woman of Madame d'Ayen's strength of character, who had gone [Pg 17]so far in refusal, would ever consent to the marriage. At this the duke warmly rushed to the defense of his wife and answered that a woman of her character, once convinced that she was wrong, would give in completely and utterly.

That was exactly what happened. After months of critical observation she found herself liking Lafayette better and better. The duke assured her that the marriage need not take place for two years, and that meantime the young man should continue his studies. She gave her consent and took the motherless boy from that moment into her heart; while the little girls, sensitive to the home atmosphere, felt the joy of reconciliation without even yet knowing how nearly it concerned them.

It was decided among the elders that Adrienne, the second daughter, was to become Madame Lafayette, because the young Vicomte de Noailles, a cousin to whom Louise had been partial from babyhood, had made formal proposals for her hand. This cousin was a friend and schoolfellow of Lafayette's, and during the next few months the youths were given the opportunity of meeting their future wives apparently by chance while out walking, and even under the roof of the duke; but for a year nothing was said to the girls about marriage. Their mother did not wish to have their minds distracted from their lessons or from that important event in the lives of Catholic maidens, their first communion.

Two months before her marriage actually took place Louise was told that she was to be the bride of Noailles; and at the time of that wedding Adrienne was informed of the fate in store for her. She found [Pg 18]nothing whatever to question in this. It seemed altogether delightful, and far simpler than deciding about the state of her own soul. The truth was that her heart had already begun to feel that love for Gilbert de Motier which was to grow and become the controlling factor of her life. Girl-like, her head was just a little turned by the momentous news of her engagement. Her mother tried to allay her excitement, but she also took care to let Adrienne know how much she liked the young man and to repeat to her all the good things she had found out about him. And to her joy, Adrienne found that Lafayette felt for the elder lady "that filial affection" which also grew as the years went on.

How he felt about marriage as the day approached we do not know; neither do we know the details of the wedding which must have been celebrated with some splendor on the 11th of April, 1774. The bride was not yet fifteen, the groom was sixteen. He was given leave of absence from his regiment, and the newly wedded pair took up their residence in the wonderful Paris home of Adrienne's family, the Hotel de Noailles. Although not far from the Tuileries, in the very heart of the city, it possessed a garden so large that a small hunt could be carried on in it, with dogs and all. John Adams is authority for this. He visited the Lafayettes there some time later, and found it unbelievably vast and splendid.

[Pg 19]III

A NEW KING

Less than a month after their marriage these young people were dressed in black, as was all the rest of fashionable Paris. The gay spring season had been brought to a premature and agitated end by the news that the king lay dead of smallpox, the loathsome disease he most dreaded.

Smallpox was distressingly common in those days before vaccination had been discovered; but courageous people protected themselves against it even then by deliberately contracting the disease from a mild case and allowing it to run its course under the best possible conditions. It was found to be much less deadly in this way, though the patients often became very ill, and it required real courage to submit to it.

The old king had never been at all brave. He feared discomfort in this life almost as much as he dreaded hell in the next; so he had fled the disease instead of courting it, and in time it came to have special terrors for him. He had been riding through the April woods with a hunting party and had come upon a sad little funeral procession--a very [Pg 20]humble one. Always curious, he stopped the bearers and asked who they were carrying to the grave. "A young girl, your Majesty." The king's watery old eyes gleamed. "Of what did she die?" "Smallpox, Sire." In terrified anger the monarch bade them begone and bury the corpse deep; then he dismissed the hunt and returned to the palace. Two days later he was stricken. The disease ran its course with amazing virulence, as though taking revenge for his misspent life. Some of the courtiers fled from Versailles. Others, to whom the king's displeasure seemed a worse menace than smallpox, remained. His favorites tried to keep the truth from the public. Daily bulletins announced that he was getting better. When it was learned that he might die the people crowded the church of Ste.-Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, kissing the reliquary and raising sobs and prayers for his recovery. When he died, on the 10th of May, his body was hastily covered with quicklime and conveyed, by a little handful of attendants who remained faithful, to St.-Denis, where the kings of France lie buried. It was done without ceremony in the dead of night. Forty days later his bones were laid in the tomb of his ancestors with all possible funeral pomp. There was decorous official mourning for the customary length of time; but the old king had never been an inspiring figure and most of his subjects were secretly glad he was out of the way.

During July and August of that year Lafayette was "in service" with the Black Mousquetaires. In September, when his period of active duty [Pg 21]was over and he could do as he chose, he had himself exposed to smallpox, and he and his wife and mother-in-law shut themselves up in a house at Chaillon, hired for the occasion, where during his illness and convalescence Madame d'Ayen devoted herself to her new son night and day.

Even while the rafters of Ste.-Geneviève were echoing to sobs and prayers for the old king's recovery, people whispered under their breath what they really thought of him; and by the time Lafayette and his wife could take their places in the world again Louis XV had been systematically forgotten. His grandson, the new king, was a well-meaning young man, only three years older than Lafayette. One of the king's intimates said that the chief trouble with Louis XVI was that he lacked self-confidence. Marie Antoinette, his queen, was fond of pleasure, and for four long years, ever since their marriage, they had been obliged to fill the difficult position of heirs apparent, hampered by all the restraints of royalty while enjoying precious few of its privileges. Like every one else, they were anxious to get the period of mourning well over and to see the real beginning of their reign, which promised to be long and prosperous. Nobody realized that the time had come when the sins and abuses of previous reigns must be paid for, and that the country was on the verge of one of the greatest revolutions of history.

To outward appearance it was a time of hope. Population was increasing rapidly; inventions and new discoveries were being made every day. [Pg 22]"More truths concerning the external world were discovered in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all preceding periods together," says Buckle. Even in the lifetime of the old king it had been impossible to stem the tide of progress: what more natural than to believe these blessings would continue, now that his evil influence was removed?

Not only had discoveries been made; they had been brought within the reach of more people than ever before. About the time Lafayette was born the first volume of a great book called the _Encyclopedia_ had made its appearance in the French language, modeled after one already produced in England. Priests had denounced it; laws had been made ordering severe penalties for its use. But it was too valuable to be given up and volume after volume continued to appear. Voltaire wrote an audacious imaginary account of the way it was used in the palace. The king's favorite did not know how to mix her rouge; the king's ministers wanted to learn about gunpowder. The forbidden book was sent for. A procession of lackeys staggered into the room, bending under the weight of twenty huge volumes, and everybody found the information desired. The bit of audacity hid a great truth. The _Encyclopedia_ had brought knowledge to the people and all were anxious to profit by it.

"The people," however, were not considered by nobles who lived in palaces. Indeed, they were only beginning to consider themselves--beginning dimly to comprehend that their day was dawning. [Pg 23]Two decades would have to pass before they were fully awake, but the scene was already being set for their great drama. Paris, the largest city in France, had increased in size one-third during the past twenty-five years. The old theory had been that too large a town was a public menace, both to health and to government. Nine times already in its history the limits of Paris had been fixed and had been outgrown. It now held between seven hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand souls. When viewed from the tower of Notre Dame it spread out ten or twelve miles in circumference, round as an orange, and cut into two nearly equal parts by the river Seine.

"One is a stranger to one's neighbor in this vast place," a man wrote soon after this. "Sometimes one learns of his death only by receiving the invitation to his funeral." "Two celebrated men may live in this city twenty-five years and never meet." "So many chimneys send forth warmth and smoke that the north wind is tempered in passing over the town." Streets were so narrow and houses so high that dwellers on the lower floors "lived in obscurity"; while elsewhere there were palaces like the great house belonging to the De Noailles family with its garden large enough to stage a small hunt. Such gardens were carefully walled away from the public. These walled-in gardens and the high, evil-smelling houses in which people lived "three hundred years behind the times," crowded together and hungry from birth to death, were equally prophetic of the awakening to come; for the improvements [Pg 24]celebrated by this writer in describing old Paris were either of a kind to let light in upon the people or to make conditions more intolerable for them.

Advertising signs no longer creaked from iron gibbets, threatening to tumble and crush the passers-by. Spurs as big as cartwheels and the huge gloves and giant boots which formerly proclaimed the business carried on under them had been banished or were now screwed securely to the walls, which gave the streets a clean-shaven appearance. The candle lanterns that used to splutter and drip and go out, leaving Paris in darkness, were replaced, on nights when the moon was off duty, by lamps burning "tripe-oil" and fitted with reflectors. By means of this brilliant improvement fashionable quarters were almost safe after nightfall, whereas in former years there had been danger of attack and robbery, even within pistol-shot of the grand home where Lafayette went to live after his marriage. In addition to the lights glowing steadily under their reflectors--one light to every seventy or one hundred inhabitants--there were many professional lantern-bearers whose business in life was escorting wayfarers to and from their homes. Paris after nightfall was atwinkle, for "to live by candle-light is a sign of opulence."

There was a fire department, newly installed, ready to come on call, and, strange to say, "it cost absolutely nothing to be rescued." That, however, was the only cheap thing in Paris. "The poorer one is the more it costs to live!" was a cry that rose then, as now, [Pg 25]in all its bitterness. With money anything could be bought. Voltaire declared that a Roman general on the day of his triumph never approached the luxury to be found here. Wares came to the city from the ends of the earth, and Parisians invented new wares of their own. Somebody had contrived umbrellas like those used in the Orient, except that these folded up when not in use. Somebody else had invented the business of renting them at a charge of two liards to gallants crossing the Pont Neuf who wished to shield their complexions. There were little stations at each end of the bridge where the money could be paid or the umbrella given up. Even seasons of the year set no limit to extravagance in Paris. "A bouquet of violets in the dead of winter costs two louis (about nine dollars), and some women wear them!"

Water was delivered daily to the tall houses, from carts, by a force of twenty thousand men, who carried it as high as the seventh floor for a trifle more than it cost to cross the Pont Neuf under the shade of an umbrella. Drivers sent their water-carts skidding over the slime, for the narrow, cobble-paved streets were black with slippery mud. Coaches and other vehicles swung around corners and dashed along at incredible speed, while pedestrians fled in every direction. There were no sidewalks and no zones of safety. The confusion was so great that dignified travel by sedan-chair had become well-nigh impossible. King Louis XV once said, "If I were chief of police I would forbid coaches"; but, being only King Louis, he had done nothing. Pedestrians were often [Pg 26]run down; then there would be even greater confusion for a few moments, but only the shortest possible halt to traffic. "When on the pavements of Paris it is easy to see that the people do not make the laws," said one who had suffered.

These people who suffered in Paris at every turn were now beginning to find a cyclopedia of their own in another invention of comparatively recent date--the cafés, warmed and lighted, where even men who had not sous enough to satisfy their hunger might cheat their stomachs with a thimbleful of sour wine or a morsel of food, and sit for hours listening and pondering the talk of others who came and went. There was much talk, and in one part of Paris or another it touched upon every known subject. Each café had its specialty; politics in one, philosophy in another, science in a third. Men of the same cast of mind gravitated toward the same spot. Cafés had already become schools. Soon they were to become political clubs. It was a wonderful way to spread new ideas.

Some of the cafés were very humble, some very expensive, but none were strictly fashionable. To be seen dining in such a place indicated that a man had no invitations to dinner, so the eighteen or twenty thousand fops who, curled and perfumed, went from house to house cared little for cafés. They ate like grasshoppers, through the welcome of one host on Monday and another on Tuesday, and so down the week, "knowing neither the price of meat nor of bread, and consuming not one-quarter of that which was set before them," while thousands went hungry--which [Pg 27]is the reason that after a time the men in the cafés rose and took a terrible revenge. Paris was by no means all France, but whatever Paris did and felt the other towns were doing also; and slowly but surely the passions animating them would make their way to the loneliest peasant hut on the remotest edge of the kingdom.

Thus, while the nobles in their gardens still dreamed pleasantly of the power that was passing from them, the people were slowly rousing from torpor to resentment. It is well to linger over these conditions in order to understand fully all that Lafayette's acts meant in the society in which he moved. He was not one of the twenty thousand fops, but he belonged to the fortunate class to whom every door seemed open during the early years of the new reign. His military duties were agreeable and light, he had plenty of money, a charming wife, powerful family connections, and he was admitted to the inmost circle at court. If he had longings to experiment with the democratic theories set forth by radical authors like Rousseau, even that was not forbidden him. Their writings had attracted much attention and had already brought about increased liberality of manners. While the court at Versailles and the city of Paris were very distinct, Paris being only a huge town near at hand, the distance between them was but fourteen miles, and it was quite possible for young men like Lafayette to go visiting, so to speak, in circles not their own. Lafayette's friend, the Comte de Ségur, has left a picture of life as the young men of their circle knew it.

[Pg 28]"Devoting all our time to society, _fêtes_, and pleasure, ... we enjoyed at one and the same time all the advantages we had inherited from our ancient institutions, and all the liberty permitted by new fashions. The one ministered to our vanity, the other to our love of pleasure. In our castles, among our peasants, our guards, and our bailiffs, we still exercised some vestiges of our ancient feudal power. At court and in the city we enjoyed all the distinctions of birth. In camp our illustrious names alone were enough to raise us to superior command, while at the same time we were at perfect liberty to mix unhindered and without ostentation with all our co-citizens and thus to taste the pleasures of plebeian equality. The short years of our springtime of life rolled by in a series of illusions--a kind of well-being which could have been ours, I think, at no other age of the world."

[Pg 29]IV

AN UNRULY COURTIER

During the winter after Adrienne's marriage the Duchesse d'Ayen took her two daughters regularly to the balls given each week by the queen, and after the balls invited the friends of her sons-in-law to supper, in a pathetically conscientious effort to make the home of the De Noailles a more agreeable place for the husbands of her children than it had been for her own. Adrienne inherited much of her mother's seriousness, but she was young enough to enjoy dancing, and, feeling that duty as well as inclination smiled upon this life, she was very happy. In December of that year her first child was born, a daughter who was named Henriette.

Lafayette tells us in his _Memoirs_ that he did not feel thoroughly at ease in the gay society Marie Antoinette drew about her. Nor did the queen altogether approve of him, because of his silence and an awkwardness which did not measure up to the standards of deportment she had set for this circle of intimate friends. "I was silent," he says, "because I did not hear anything which seemed worth repeating; and I certainly had no thoughts of my own worthy of being put into [Pg 30]words." Some of his friends, who knew him better than the queen, realized that there was plenty of fire in him, in spite of his cold manner and slow speech. De Ségur was one of these, for at some period of his youth Lafayette, smitten with sudden and mistaken jealousy, had spent nearly an entire night trying to persuade De Ségur to fight a duel with him about a beauty for whom De Ségur did not care at all.