The Collège Du Plessis must have been almost like a monastery. Each boy had a stuffy little cell into which he was locked at night. No member of a student's family might cross the threshold, and the many careful rules for health and diet were quite the opposite of those now practised. This period of Lafayette's school-days was a time when men's ideas on a variety of subjects were undergoing vast change. The old notion that learning was something to be jealously guarded and made as difficult and disagreeable as possible died hard. It is true that the good Fénelon, who believed in teaching children to read from books printed in French instead of in Latin, and who thought it could do them no harm if the books were "well bound and gilded on the edge," had gone to his reward half a century before; but he had been writing about the education of girls! When Lafayette was only five years old one Jean Jacques Rousseau had published a fantastic story called Émile, which was nothing in the world but a treatise on education in disguise. In this he objected to the doctrine of original sin, holding that children were not born bad; and he reasoned that they did not learn better nor more quickly for having knowledge beaten into them with rods. But this man Rousseau was looked upon as an infidel and a dangerous character. Probably at Du Plessis the discipline and course of study belonged to the old order of things, though there were concessions in the way of teaching the young gentlemen manners and poetry and polite letter-writing, which they would need later in their fashionable life at court. History as taught them was hopelessly tangled up in heraldry, being all about the coats of arms and the quarrels of nobles in France and neighboring countries. When something about justice and liberty and the rights of the people did creep into the history lesson the tall young student from Auvergne fell upon it with avidity. Perhaps it was because of such bits scattered through the pages of Roman authors that he learned considerable Latin, and learned it well enough to remember it forty years later, when he found it useful to piece out his ignorance of German in talking with his Austrian jailers.
In spite of queer notions about hygiene, like those which bade him shut out fresh air from his room at night and avoid the risk of eating fresh fruit, he grew in body as well as in mind during the years at Du Plessis, and he had almost reached his man's height of five feet eleven inches, when one day in 1770 a messenger came to the college, bringing the news that his mother had just died. A very few days later her death was followed by that of her father, who was wealthy and had made the boy his heir. Thus, almost within a week, he found himself infinitely poorer than he had ever been before, yet very rich, deprived of those dearest to him and in possession of a large fortune.
People began to take a sudden lively interest in him. The son of a young widow studying in the Collège Du Plessis was of consequence only to himself and his mother. But the young Marquis de Lafayette, of such old and excellent family, such good disposition, such a record in his studies, such a very large income—above all, a generous young man with no near relatives to give meddling advice about how he should spend his money, became fair prey for all the fortune-hunters prowling around the corrupt court of old Louis XV.
These were many. The king was bored as well as old. His days were filled with a succession of tiresome ceremonies. A crowd of bowing courtiers was admitted to his bedroom before he got up in the morning. Crowds attended him at every turn, even assisting in his toilet at night. Frederick the Great had said, "If I were king of France, the first thing I would do would be to appoint another king to hold court in my place"! But indolent old Louis had not the energy even to break down customs which had come to him from the days of kings long dead. "He cared for nothing in this life except to hunt, and feared nothing in the life to come except hell." When not hunting, his one desire was to be let alone to pursue whatever evil fancy entered his brain.
The people at court had two desires—to flatter the king and to get money. The first was the surest means to the second. Everybody, good and bad, seemed in need of money, for the few rich nobles had set a style of living which not even the king could afford to follow. It was all part of the same tangle, the result of accidents and crimes and carelessness extending through many reigns, which had brought about ever-increasing visits of the tax-collectors and reduced the peasants to starvation. One after another important concessions had been given away as a mark of royal favor, or else had been sold outright. A clever man in the reign of Louis XIV had remarked that whenever his Majesty created an office the Lord supplied a fool to buy it. In the reign of his grandson, Louis XV, things were even worse. A high-sounding official title, carrying with it a merely nominal duty and some privilege that might be turned into coin, was the elegant way of overcoming financial difficulty. Even the wax candles burned in the sconces at Versailles were sold for the benefit of the official who had charge of their lighting. He saw to it that plenty of candles were lighted, and that none of them burned too long before going to swell his income. What the great nobles did lesser ones imitated; and so on, down a long line. No wonder that young Lafayette, having inherited his fortune, became suddenly interesting.
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 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 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 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.