Historic Boyhoods

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Now that the garden party was at its height, Lafayette was the undisputed leader of the youths. It was he who swooped down upon the stately Mistress of the Robes and ordered his band of hobgoblins to carry her off to the summer-house on the edge of the woods, and keep her a prisoner there, while they sang her the latest ballads of the Paris streets. It was he who had a ring of fairies dance about the Lord Chamberlain until that haughty person was so dizzy that he had to put his hands to his eyes and run as rapidly as dignity would let him to a place of safety. The boy took his orders from the beautiful Queen of the Fairies, Marie Antoinette, who, more radiant and lovely than ever, sat on the rustic throne and sent her messengers to the different groups in the gardens. Beside her stood the young King Louis, laughing and admiring the ingenuity of her plans.

Next day, however, came the retribution. The courtiers were up in arms. They had managed to go through one such evening, but they did not propose to stand another. The most important people in France went to the King and placed their grievances before him. Louis loved peace, so that now he was willing to take the side of the courtiers, and as a result the day of the children was over.

Marie Antoinette, fond of pleasure above everything else, tried to have her way for a short time, but before a month had passed, the weight of its old time formal dignity had fallen on Versailles, and the children were again made to pattern after their elders.

Fond as the young Marquis had been of the good times with playmates of his own age at Versailles, he could not endure the stiff court nor look with any satisfaction to the formal life which most of the young men of the time led. He was naturally too independent to bow and scrape as was required. In spite of his careful training he found that he had not acquired the endless flow of frivolous talk which was popular at court. He was usually silent in company, and more and more given to going away by himself, in order to escape the affectations of the life about him. His only chance seemed to lie in the army, and therefore he spent a great deal of his time with his regiment of Black Musketeers, and began to plan for a military career.

He had been made a cadet of the old French regiment called the Black Musketeers when he was only twelve years old. Then he was a slight little chap with bright reddish hair and very fair complexion, and much too small to carry a man's arms; but he was so fond of the splendid-looking set of men that whenever they paraded he was sure to be somewhere near at hand to watch them. The boy's name had been placed on the Musketeers' rolls, though not as a regular cadet, very soon after his birth, because his great-uncle had been a member of the regiment and was eager to have his family name connected with it.

It happened that this twelve-year-old cadet was already a very important person in the kingdom of France. He had been baptized by the names of Marie Paul Joseph Roche Ives Gilbert de Mottier, and held the title of Marquis of Lafayette. His father had been killed at the battle of Minden when he was only twenty-four years old, but had already won a great name for bravery. His mother died soon afterward, and so the young Marquis was left almost alone in his great castle of Chavaniac in the Auvergne Mountains of southern France.

He must have been very lonely with no playmates of his own age and only masters and governesses about him. He was what people called "land poor," which meant that although he owned a large part of French territory, it brought him in but small profit, and he had little money to spend.

To make up for his lack of playmates, his masters spent much time drilling the boy Marquis in the etiquette of the French nobility. High-born French youths at that time had many things to learn, but they were such things as would make the boy an ornamental piece of furniture at court. He must be able to enter a drawing-room with perfect dignity, to compliment a lady, to pick up a fan, to offer his arm with an air of gallantry, to take part in the formal dances of the period, to draw his sword in case his honor should require it.

The little boys and girls of Louis XVI's reign were dressed in stiff court clothes almost as soon as they were old enough to talk, and were taught bows and curtsies, gallant words and dancing steps when other children would have been playing out-of-doors. As a result they grew up much alike, most of them merely fashion plates to decorate the royal palace at Versailles.

Fortunately for the boy his lonely life in the mountains ended when he was twelve years old. Then his great uncle sent for him to come to Paris, and placed him at the College du Plessis, where a great many other young courtiers were being educated. The school taught him very little of history, of foreign languages, or sciences, but a great deal about riding and fencing and dancing, and how to write a letter which should be full of worldly wisdom. At about the same time his grandfather died, and he inherited a very large fortune, so that the small boy bore not only one of the oldest titles in the kingdom but possessed enough money to do exactly as he pleased. There was only one course open to him—the life of a courtier at Versailles.