Lafayette, We Come! / The Story of How a Young Frenchman Fought for Liberty in America and How America Now Fights for Liberty in France

by Rupert Sargent Holland

But the boy of seventeen, son of a line of rugged Auvergne fighters, men of independent natures, did not take readily to the unceasing show and luxury of court. Balls and dramas, rustic dances and dinners and suppers, all the extravagant entertainments that the clever mind of the young Queen could devise, followed in endless succession. True it was that some of the courtiers had the fashion of talking a good deal about the rights of man and human liberty, but that was simply a fashion in a country where only the nobles had liberty and the talk of such things only furnished polite conversation in drawing-rooms. To Lafayette, however, liberty meant more than that; young though he was, he had seen enough of the world to wish that there might be less suffering among the poor and more liberality among the wealthy. The constant stream of pleasures at Versailles often gave him food for thought, and though he was very fond of the King and Queen and their youthful court, he had less and less regard for the older nobles, who appeared to him as vain and stiff and foolish as so many strutting peacocks.

Sometimes, however, for all his thoughtfulness, he joined whole-heartedly in the revels the Queen devised. On one midsummer night Marie Antoinette gave a fête at Versailles, and Lafayette led the revels. The Queen had declared that she meant to have a fête champêtre in the gardens that should be different from anything the court of France had ever seen. All her guests should appear either as goblins or as nymphs. They should not be required to dance the quadrille or any other stately measure, but would be free to play any jokes that came into their heads. As Marie Antoinette outlined these plans to him Lafayette shook his head in doubt.

“What will the lords in waiting say to this?” he asked, “and your Majesty’s own ladies?”

The pretty Queen laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Who cares?” she answered. “As long as Louis is King I shall do what pleases me.”

Then a new idea occurred to her and she clapped her hands with delight. “I shall go to Louis,” she said, “and have him issue a royal order commanding every one who comes to the fête to dress as a goblin or a nymph. He will do it for me, I know.”

King Louis was too fond of his wife to deny her anything, so he issued the order she wanted, much though he feared that it might affront the older courtiers. And the courtiers were affronted and horrified. The Royal Chamberlain and the Queen’s Mistress of the Robes went to the King in his workshop, for Louis was always busy with clocks and locks and keys, and told him that such a performance as was planned would make the court of France appear ridiculous.

Louis listened to them patiently, and when they had left he sent for Marie Antoinette and her friends. They described how absurd the courtiers would look as nymphs and goblins and the King laughed till he cried. Then he dismissed the whole matter and went back to the tools on his work-table.

So Marie Antoinette had her party, and the gardens of Versailles saw the strange spectacle of tall, stiff goblins wearing elaborate powdered wigs and jeweled swords, and stout wood-nymphs with bare arms and shoulders and glittering with gems. The Queen’s friends, a crowd of hobgoblins, swooped down upon the stately Mistress of the Robes and carried her off to a summer-house on the edge of the woods, where they kept her a prisoner while they sang her the latest ballads of the Paris streets. The court was shocked and indignant, and the next day there was such a buzzing of angry bees about the head of the King that he had to lecture the Queen and her friends and forbid any more such revels.

As the older courtiers regained their influence over Louis the young Lafayette went less and less often to Versailles. He was too independent by nature to bow the knee to the powdered and painted lords and ladies who controlled the court. Instead of seeking their society he spent more and more time with his regiment of Musketeers. But this did not satisfy his father-in-law, the Duke d’Ayen, who was eager for Lafayette to shine in the sun of royal favor. So the Duke went to the young Count de Segur, Lafayette’s close friend and cousin, and begged him to try and stir the Marquis to greater ambition.