Constance Wright - Madame de Lafayette

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This edition is published by BORODINO BOOKS www.pp-publishing.com

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Text originally published in 1959 under the same title.

Borodino Books 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MADAME DE LAFAYETTE

BY

CONSTANCE WRIGHT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

For Mary Lee, with all good will

and a few doubts

AUTHORS NOTE

Recently, in 1956, Count Ren de Chambrun, one of Adrienne de Lafayettes descendants, took possession of the chateau of La Grange-Blneau, where she spent the last years of her life; there he discovered a treasure trove of documents. Until these have been sorted over and made available to scholars, no absolutely definitive life of Adrienne can be written. So much material is already available, however, that her story is told here with the hope that only a few minor details are lackingand with the conviction that the last word can never be spoken of a person of whom there is abundant record, and who lived so abundantly.

PART ONEJanuary, 1782October, 1791

CHAPTER IHeroic Homecoming

PARIS, which today is a city of broad boulevards, of endless vistas, was at the end of the eighteenth century still a walled town. It was surrounded by field and woodland and by sprawling suburbs, some of them as hideous slums as one could find anywhere in Europe.

The streets of the city proper were narrow and crooked. In winter they were thickly smeared with mud and sewage, but on the day preceding January 21 st , 1782, a miracle of municipal house cleaning was brought to pass. The entire city was swept clean; thousands of firepots were distributed for after dark illuminationfor January 21 st was to be a day of fte, of fanfare. At Versailles, Queen Marie Antoinette of France had borne a son. In the morning she would come from La Muette, a royal hunting lodge on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, for her churching in Notre Dame. Later in the day, the King would join her for a state banquet at the Hotel de Ville.

The weather on the 21 st was clear and bright. Everyone was out; everyone wanted to see the royal processions as they entered and left the city. In the afternoon, however, sensation seekers discovered that there was a counter attraction. In the Rue St. Honor, which was off the expected line of march, a crowd gathered in front of a large, handsome house, which, with its wide forecourt, its pillared faade, and beautiful formal garden that stretched as far as the Tuileries and what is now the Rue de Rivoli, was one of the showplaces of Paris.

This was the city mansiona hotel in the primitive sense of the termof a very important family that for generations had held high positions in the government of France. The Duc Marchal de Noailles was the patriarch of the clan; his eldest son, the Duc dAyen, was Captain of the Kings bodyguard. The Hotel de Noailles had always been admired, but for the past five years passers-by had stopped to gape at it in wonder. It was widely known that this was the home not only of the Noailles dukes and duchesses but of a Noailles son-in-law, the Marquis de Lafayette.

All knew the life story of this remarkable young man. In 1774, at the early age of sixteen, Gilbert du Motier, one of the richest boys of noble blood in France, was married to Marie Adrienne Franoise, the second of the Duc dAyens five daughters. Three years later he left abruptly to fight in the American War for Independence. In 1779 he returned a universal hero, the darling of the court and of the nation, only to depart for another long campaign across the Atlantic which had recently ended in victory. Three days ago, Lafayette had landed at Lorient and word had just been spread about in the capital that he might arrive at any moment.

Among those who waited at the gate of the Hotel de Noailles were some women who sold fish in the Paris market. Dressed in their Sunday best, they had brought with them sheaves of laurel to present to the conqueror. That Lafayette had routed the British almost single-handedly at Yorktown they were sure; they were also sure that in some way, not yet revealed to them, he would be the champion of liberty their libertyat home.

Presently a carriage appeared; cheers and cries of long live Lafayette went up. The tall young man of twenty-four who emerged from the post chaise, with his broad shoulders, his great beak of a nose and his reddish hair, was no Prince Charming, but the crowd had not expected that he would be as pretty as a porcelain doll. In his uniform of an American Major-General, Lafayette was an impressive, a soldierly figure.

As always, his manners were equal to the occasion. He accepted the fishwives offering gratefully and without the slightest hint of condescension. He made a little speech of thanks and waited patiently until all had had a good look at him before entering the house.

It seemed as if the show was over. The servant who opened the door to him, and even the fishwives, could tell the Marquis that his wife, the person he had wanted most to surprise, was not at home. She and all the adult members of her familyher father, her mother, and her sisterswere at the reception at the Hotel de Ville. When they would return was anybodys guess. By this time the town hall dinner must be over, but protocol demanded that no one should leave before the Queen had been bowed into her coach. After her would come the King, the Princes of the Blood, and all the high dignitaries of the realm in slow moving, well-established order of precedence. This might mean a wait of several hours, and the crowd began to thin out soon after Lafayette had disappeared from view.

A short time later, however, those who lingered got their reward. A fresh wave of sightseers began to pour in from the direction of the Hotel de Ville, filling the street and the courtyard of the Hotel de Noailles and lining the steps of the parish Church of St. Roch across the way. First, distant shouts and the blare of trumpets, then, the thud of horses hoofs and the jingle of harness announced that there had been a change of royal plan. The Queens coach, with its mounted escort and outriders, all decked out in their beribboned birthday finery, came lurching down the Rue St. Honor. It ground to a halt before the house of the Duc dAyen.

Again a shout went up, a double-barreled shout, for the Queen was not alone in her jewel box setting. Beside her on the velvet cushions was seated a young woman, elaborately dressed, elaborately jeweled, but not as resplendent as the Queen, for no one was permitted to out-glitter royalty. Dark haired, white skinned, with delicately chiseled featureswhat one noticed first about Adrienne de Lafayette were her very large, her very expressive eyes, deep set under thick, dark eyebrows. Because she was so small and slight, Adriennewho had recently celebrated her twenty-second birthdaylooked almost like a school girl; her youth, her pallor were perfect foils to set off the triumphant, full-blown beauty of her carriage-mate.

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