by S. P. Grogan
“So, this is our guest of no name that I was told to expect?” Syrup poured her voice, coquettish her face beamed.
“Yes, Madame. We were told you were virtuous with anonymity.” From nowhere, Blasse produced a small purple felt bag of coins. Gilbert accepted whatever was within, small as it was, must suggest to him gold rather than silver coins. Someone, a relative, or maybe a future relative, was going to great lengths to be assured that he was to leave tonight an educated man who could perform to his filial obligations. Gilbert accepted his fate. Non-performance and failure to create an heir would be extreme embarrassment to all, he more than others.
“He seems a virile young man, handsome as the King’s officers be, though I do sense a regal posture of good breeding. I am sure what we have prepared shall meet with his approval.” She motioned, he followed, Blasse remained, walking over and picking up the brandy bottle, for another pouring to bide his time. Madame Gourdan led Gilbert to the stairs and up. Before a door, she stopped him.
“Monsieur, I have been presented with certain direction. Behind this door you will meet a lovely young lady. Upon my oath, I can confirm she is clean and not poxed. In fact, she comes from a good family and grew up pious in a convent. So recent a virgin, no longer, but gives eagerness in her temperament, ardor in the bedroom, no tired whore, I assure you. But I must warn you that after this night do not seek her out. She is to marry a man of import, so to her, her need is for passion, and by fate you may be her final lover, but, who knows, probably not as she is quite skilled. And Monsieur, a final word of wisdom, from a woman of great experience: be here a patient student, be an explorer with your hands, women like the caress more so than the plunge of the battering ram.
“And Monsieur,” Madame Gourdan chuckled, “Do not be too hasty and not forget to remove your sword before such entertainment begins. One prick in bed is enough.” With another laugh, she knocked on the door, opened it, and pushed the young soldier within, shutting the door behind him.
Gilbert let his eyes adjust to the only two candles in the room, definitely a boudoir featuring thick drapes, flocked wallpaper, and an elevated bed upon which a young woman lounged in a white chemise. He walked to the end of the bed and looked down upon her form, one breast uncovered; blonde hair cascaded to cover the other.
Gilbert stared at her beauty, then realization.
“You are the dancer, the ballerina in Romeo et Juliette.”
She sat up, and stared back at him. Her art of numbing herself to obscure the face of men she lay with evaporated. He had seen her dance, and recognized her. And he was a boy seeking manhood, she apprised him; could the two of them be intoxicated in the search of first experience? She laughed lightly, friendly.
“I had to tip Madame Gourdan’s driver to speed back here to await my ‘surprise’. And it is to be you.” She rose and walked to him, he saw her like a lithe image of forest imp, graceful. She undid his sword belt to let it and the sheathed weapon fall to the floor, and stood back to look at him.
“A fine young man. Are you some great noble?” Then he laughed, and she followed suit, accepting any lie he gave would be honored.
“No, mademoiselle, just a mere soldier.”
“A famous warrior, no doubt?” Her skill being to relax the nervous and uninitiated.
“Someday I shall be a famous soldier.” She gave him a short serious glance, undoing his soldier tunic.
“Yes, by such assuredness, I am sure you will. Then, soldier of the king, let me introduce myself: I am Catherine-Rosalie Duthé. And I too, one day will be famous...and rich.”
“I wish us both well to that regard, Catherine-Rosalie.” He relaxed. “My name is Gilbert.”
She removed his mask, took in his features, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
“Come, let us celebrate our futures. Gil.”
From 1770 to 1782 the Comédie-Française performed at the Tuileries Palace before moving to what is now the Théâtre de l'Odéon . Ticket prices are so high only the nobility can afford to attend.
23.
1773
Tugged and pulled by these aristocratic intrigues, the Duc d’Ayen most particular, who wished to further gild the family bloodline tapestries with wealth and expected heirs, the boy marquis, now 15 years-old and fledgling courtier, found his body and spirit in constant motion. He bore no public complaints for all new demands looking upon them with curiosity and little time for deep reflection. Drilled into his psyche since childhood the illusionary textbook concepts of ‘duty’ and ‘honor’ found hardness and understanding as he gained an ‘adopted family’, and so Gilbert became an acolyte towards a future military career, and a presently accepted the false regard that court life held value.
In February, after the wedding contract was formally signed he found himself uprooted from the Luxembourg Palace and moved into the Noailles court residence outside the Versailles Palace. The Duc enrolled him into the prestigious Académie de Versailles and in April he joined, with great relish, the prestigious Noailles Dragoons, though somewhat disappointed that his rank was to be that of a mere (full) Lieutenant, not Captain as the Duc had first promised, the excuse again dictated by a time of uncertain peace with a top-heavy list of an idle officer corps.
Still, these new circumstances gave him heart to his soldiery ambitions and uncomfortably balanced at the same time with the inner feeling he was still the outsider, the oddity provincial noble among the court’s hierarchy. His other classmates were young heirs of the highest ranks, stuffy with protocol, like the Count of Artois, his own age, and destined to be a future king. His awkward circumstances of being suddenly elevated by wealth and Noailles adoption pushed him further into his comfort realm of silence. To those court wags who looked upon him defined his aloofness as boorish short of rudeness, and so his public character was set.
This was not true to those who saw behind the façade; one friend said of Gilbert, he speaks nothing for he is overwhelmed with pensive shyness. Yes, he did start acquiring acquaintances of friendship and worthy of note were three individuals, eventually to grow intimate to his favor.
LOUIS PHILLIPPE, COMTE de Ségur—‘Phillipe’ to friends—was born in 1753. His Father, Phillippe Henri, marquis de Ségur, served as a lieutenant-general and a favorite of the King. Phillippe’s father had lost an arm in battle, and had fought at Minden where Gilbert’s father had been cut in half by a cannon ball. Those circumstances of military boys seeing common enemies brought them close.
Another friend by family relations was Louis Marc Antoine de Noailles, vicomte de Noailles, (‘Marc’) born 1756, and the second son of Phillipe, duc de Mouchy, and a member of the Mouchy branch of the Noailles family. In point of fact, when Lafayette entered the Noailles sphere of influence, Marc had just become engaged to his own cousin, Anne Jeanne de Noailles, sister to Lafayette’s secret betrothed, Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles.
In the selective knowledge of the secret wedding contract between Gilbert and Adrienne, Duchess Noailles could manage employing the two youngsters, Gilbert and Adrienne, as indirect chaperones as the Vicomte and her daughter Anne went out to walk the Noailles hotel gardens in Paris or at Versaille, during the summer when the children would come to the palace as a treat.
Adrienne, still unaware of the role she was to play, enjoyed the social banter, and Gilbert being the only boy she saw close at hand, and to see how her sister acted as a future bride with her betrothed, the Vicomte de Noailles. Adrienne took her mother’s strict religious background and absorbed it into her world a romanticism to give her narrow world an edge of excitement. In time, these arranged harmless contacts would grow in Adrienne’s imagination as seeing in the young man, the soldier, the courtier, a vision of Crusader or as the French hero, Sir Lancelot du Lac of the King Arthur legends... She became smitten with harbored affection, vexed as a star-crossed Juliet might be to have a secret infatuation she could not share but only daydream upon.
So, it came to be, in this formative yea
r of 1773, Phillipe Ségur would open Lafayette’s eyes to a wider age of enlightenment thought; Marc Noailles, would by stellar breeding (if not a gusto for fast living) show Gilbert how to tread the formalized aristocracy stage of manners and by observation gain insight to the art of courtly romance; while his future wife by contract, the 13 year old Adrienne, would offer unabashed hero worship providing self-confidence this orphan boy-soldier desperately needed to stroke a fragile ego.
To all, in the end, it would be Adrienne La Fayette who would become Gilbert’s best and most enduring friend, not merely a proscribed wife and mother.
FROM BEHIND THE LACE curtains at the second story window, the Duchess looked down at the intimate late summer garden party at the Hôtel de Noailles. All things seemed to be going well with the parental plans for their daughter, Adrienne. The Duc and his advisors were close to final adjustments to the wedding contract, even to the point the dowry for his daughter had been set at 200,000 francs, manageable, with a last minute commitment to a surety bond using the estate of the Duchess, available upon her death. The Duchess knew her husband would look to accounting measures by the Duc using the young Marquis’s own bank accounts so that the dowry might never be paid outright out of the D’Ayen pockets. Such was her husband’s expertise at manipulation. But that was of little matter to Adrienne’s mother for only her daughter’s comfort and dutiful acceptance of her role as wife to a nobleman mattered. And with religious upbringing instilled, the only concern was Adrienne’s physical well being to bear children.
What was surprising in all this subterfuge, over the recent months the Duchess had grown to accept Gilbert as a truly adopted family member; never the son she had lost as the baby to smallpox, but as one with a likable temperament, his countenance neither brash nor rudely demonstrative. She found, when the right subject was pressed, mostly on military history the boy could beam into an articulate discussion. The Duke, having secured a signed wedding contract, moved on to other court matters or closeted himself with his scientific dabbling and mostly ignored the boy finding his conversations as insignificant prattle.
The Duchess saw matters differently, that it was her turn to artfully achieve marital harmony, as best one could do with those few meetings where her daughter was in the presence of her future husband, yet unknown to the child. The Duchess therefore made certain that Gilbert was the only male near Adrienne’s age allowed to be brought within close proximity, giving the young girl no ability to make boy-to-boy comparisons, nor bring her out too much in public, to allow her to pick up any bad habits such as the wanton art of court flirtation. And with the approaching wedding of her older sister, Adrienne indirectly had been given several responsibilities that furthered her education, showing the child how one carried off a wedding as a participant, and those obligations of the expected Christian and Catholic marital duty of obedience to husband.
TODAY, ALL WAS RIGHT with the world. In the garden, Gilbert and Adrienne, strolled together at a respectful distance from Adrienne’s sister, Louise, and her betrothed, who also at the riding academy, had become because of all the related circumstances to be, a new friend to Gilbert, more like a big brother. Gilbert seemed to be quite happy, seeing the Vicomte de Noailles, as someone to emulate, if not follow, to become a successful courtier and better servant of the King.
The Duchess also saw her other daughters gaily in the cortege behind the two couples, more playful at gossip or smelling the flowers of the garden. Behind them came the children’s servants, discreetly available if called upon. The Duchess had a strong hand on her servants but still had not come to terms with Gilbert’s manservant, Blasse was his name. The man seemed to be of rough edges, more for the stables than that as a bedchamber valet. She worried he might be a bad influence on Gilbert and his future role as a gentleman, but she accepted this was a Rievère family appointment and she would accept the accommodation, though she did not like it. She made a mental note: after Adrienne’s wedding she would give the ‘Lafayettes’ another servant from the Noailles household, and the man servant Blasse shoved to the side.
Beside these certain qualifications, the Duchess of D’Ayen felt her plans coming along exceedingly well. Two daughters to be married within months of each other and both seem to be happy with the choices made for them. She let the curtain drop back into place, confident in the future.
“Are you to be a soldier forever,” asked Adrienne, walking to the side of Gilbert. Her eyes were not to his but forward to her sister, watching how she walked, and occasionally bumped into, or brushed against the side of Marc Louis. Adrienne was smart enough to understand this is what couples did, not flagrant touching, heaven forbid, but illusions by language of words and motion.
Gilbert wished he was somewhere else, that Marc Louis and he could go out, perhaps to the coffee houses to banter with friends, or perhaps go out to the racetrack and see the stable of fine racing horses that the Mouchy family kept. He knew the child to his side was to be his future wife. He was never rude to her, nor spoke down to her. A future wife must be intelligent to her husband’s goals and desires, and be supportive. Though she was quite pretty, more so dainty, Gilbert could only see her as an obligation, a requirement in the membership to the club, the court life, and acceptance he sought by his achievements, accolades by the King and court, to his future great abilities.
“It is my determination to be a career soldier, yes.” He responded, thought that should be quite enough, but felt she might be seeking more.
“I know who I am and of all careers I see where my best talents lie,” he said with affirmation. They strolled the garden with the others, he awkward that the heat of the day caused his uniform collar to itch. He hoped her heavy perfume would mask his own odors from his recent arrival by horse, not carriage, and his not having bathed for a full three days.
“My tutor is a former cleric and I could never be a man of the cloth.”
“But priests are benevolent and wise and close to God’s perfection.” At this point, Gilbert glanced at her, and realized that her Mother’s devout Christianity had been indelible in Adrienne’s upbringing. He sighed and wondered if the Noailles household actually was a cloistered nunnery in disguise.
“Yes, they perform the will of God, but God also directs that men must fight good over evil, and right now the ‘Anglaise’ are heretics and God sanctions that we of France must be the victorious for the wishes of the Church.”
“Yes.” Adrienne was not so much agreeing, as believing he must be right.
“Neither priest, nor a man of trade, could I be, so my future is limited. Anyone who sees that of me and wishes to be part of my world must understand my path is chosen.” He startled and did not know why he made such a strong outpouring of sentiment. It was a conscience of goal deep within him and perhaps he wanted his future wife to know where she would have to follow and be strong at his expected long absences. Perhaps her faith would be her own private castle of protection against his soldiering and fears it might bring. But at this moment he cared little for what might be within her, and knew her only as a smiling young thing.
“Yes,” again she said, accepting what he was to be.
Gilbert made a response to his future brother-in-law Marc Louis’s query to seek shade for the young ladies and ask the servants to bring them sugared lemon water and sweet cakes. And the remaining conversations between Gilbert and Adrienne dissolved into gossip of court and Paris, and their talk joined with the others in being light and forgettable.
Gilbert’s brother-in-law, Louis-Marie, ‘Marc’, vicomte de Noailles
24.
2 NOVEMBER 1773
Before she called her daughter to her for the announcement, Henriette Anne Louise d'Aguesseau, the Duchess D’Ayen, reviewed the past year of her social management of the courtship between her daughter Marie Adrienne and the awkward Gilbert La Fayette. She was quite pleased with the results.
The timing for the revelation was propitious. Today was Adrienne’s fourteen
th birthday with special mass in the Noailles chapel the highlight of the day, followed by small cakes for all her sisters. Another event a month earlier had moved along the Duchess’s thinking that the moment had arrived. This had been the wedding of her other daughter Anna Louise to a close family relationship of the Mouchy branch of the Noailles, to her daughter’s cousin, the Viacomte de Noailles. The Duchess during the festivities had seen Adrienne in happy spirits, with the child’s eager eyes darting when she thought no one was watching at the young Gilbert, dressed expensively in the latest fashions. He had been chosen, to her delight as her escort to the wedding banquet, and later as a dance partner. The Duchess could see that Gilbert still lacked the grace of proper court dancing, a heavy shoe stumbler at his best, but improvement on that social art would come in time, and was minor to the ultimate goal—marriage, children, further enhancement to the Noailles power base.
“Mama, you wished to see me?” Adrienne asked as she rose from her curtsy. Her mother gave her quick appraisal. Her daughter’s complexion was white of unblemished skin, hidden from outside sun; a mop of curling brown hair revealed that over the last year the childish face had thinned to highlight the cheekbones, a good feature. An innocent spirit beamed for she had never faced hardship nor was of need, she had sisters as playmates, and servants, except her nanny, had been silent except to command.
“My dear Adrienne,” said her mother, motioning the child to sit on the same divan as she.
“With your sister’s wedding behind us, your father and I have felt we must again look to the well-being and future of our children.”