Lafayette_Courtier to Crown Fugitive, 1757-1777

by S. P. Grogan

  “Are we greater than the slave?” began Raynal, caught up in a fervor his words strong and pointed. “Are we above them because we bear no visible chains? Liberty is the property of one’s self not of that of any man or race. Three kinds of it are distinguished. Natural liberty, civil liberty, and political liberty. Natural liberty is the right granted by nature to every man to dispose of himself at pleasure. Civil liberty is the right which is insured by society to every citizen, of doing everything which is not contrary to the laws. Political liberty is the state of a people who have not alienated their sovereignty, and who make their own law, or who constitute a part in the system of their legislation.

  “It can be said, in general terms, that in parts of Europe, as well as in America, the people are slaves and the only advantage we have over the Negroes is that we can break one chain to put on another.”

  A couple of the guests of Madame Geoffrin looked uncomfortable but gave limp smiles as if they understood such profound words, more worried when Raynal continued.

  “Nations cannot always be the master; slaves must always rise to their inherited right to be the freed man. Negroes only want a leader, sufficiently courageous to lead them on to vengeance and slaughter.

  “The Negro slaves groan under the oppression of brutal labor. Where is this great man, whom nature owes to her afflicted, oppressed, and tormented children? Where is he? He will undoubtedly appear, he will show himself, he will lift up the sacred standard of liberty.”

  Raynal’s discourse went on blaming all the major slavers of the European States, and prophesying eventual destruction by fire and sword. After awhile, Gilbert wandered away, sensing Raynal sounded like a hybrid between a brimstone pulpit priest and one of his past rambling college instructors. The marquis was a young man more interested in soldiering arms and wooing into arms. Still, by default of being within range of intelligent voices he gained knowledge, where like a tide after a storm, flotsam and jetsam of random disconnected ideas lodged among the rocks of his brain. Negroes were oppressed. Liberty was a right of all men. Heroes were sought. All conversation from the night’s outing were only fragments, not going deep, yet retained as impressionable coalescing. For what need? The civilized world was at peace.

  So, these discourse seeds were planted and when that night waned he went to a happy slumber, his dreams were of great adventures in far off places like the Indies and the wilderness continent where savages roamed free, that place called America.

  Failed conquest...for the moment - Countess of Hunolstein, known by friends as Agalé

  31

  WHEN ATTENDING THE winter court balls with her husband, Adrienne had taken note of Gilbert’s wandering eye. Not blatant towards rudeness but she could see that he was being a lot more judgmental and appraising of women who floated among the marble floors of the palaces and swirled dancing within the cotillion steps. She had heard from her sister of Gilbert’s recent failed flirtation with an important personage, a married woman that upon Adrienne’s own inspection at a gala, held to herself two opinions. First, the duchess was ‘old’ and she thought Gilbert, her husband, could have done a lot better with better deliberation. Second, she had to admit to herself, she felt inadequate, a sad inability to be able to compete with all the fashionable beauties. For several weeks, she found herself at first depressed, wrapping the mantle of self-loathing around her mind, then reached deep within her nearby world of religion and sought comfort. Whether it was the act of Christian forgiveness or seeing in her own mother how the duchess accepted and handled the fact her husband, the duke, maintained a mistress, even as discreet he sought to hide the fact from the family.

  Adrienne found strength in her God. She took Communion for the first time believing she would achieve a state of sinless purity and upon her knees as she sipped the blood of Christ, she came to an understanding on what she must do. Purged of sin she felt it would be no sin to bear just a little transgression so as not to be too perfect, for only the Holy Savior was unblemished. Perhaps it was more a dollop of maturity which led to her subsequent action. A snowstorm likewise helped.

  WHEN THAT EVENING THEY entered the Paris Opera there were only light white flurries. Adrienne and Gilbert had come with other courtiers to attend a production of the ballet Les Horaces et les Curiaces, choreographed by the ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre, founder of the ballet d’action. Noverre, at one time, had worked in Vienna as Maître de danse for Queen Marie- Theresa, and her 12 year old daughter, Marie-Antoinette, who now ten years later as Queen of France was ready to appoint her past dance instructor to the Paris Opera in the top position. It was an excellent performance and Adrienne enjoyed it immensely.

  After the curtain descended on the performance, with three curtain calls of bravissimo, all sought out their carriages, the snow close to a half a meter deep, and blowing sideways. Icicles hung from horse manes and the cobblestone streets were treacherous.

  When the couple found safety in front of a roaring hearth fire, each sipping on a demi-tumbler of heated wine, Adrienne found the courage to speak in a soft voice to Gilbert.

  “My maid did not come in today, brought low with a cold. My sister sleeps not in my bedroom as usual but in a room she found less drafty. As we can see, the house is asleep.” She paused and lowered her voice. “My door will be unlocked.” She put down her glass, gave Gilbert a pixie smile, and taking a candle, proceeded to the stairs and up to her room.

  Gilbert gulped his wine. He was in slight shock at her affront. A few minutes later in the darkness of the house he carefully ascended, knowing which door he would ease open, excited, yet unsure, to what expectation.

  Adrienne woke to a new world of wonderment. Her bed had become hers alone before the first grey colors tinged the morning sky. His smell lingered and she rolled leisurely in languid motion from her side of the bed, away from the small stain of blood that signaled the quick pain of a breached maidenhead.

  From what she had learned in bits and pieces, as heard from her older sister and the ribald stories from the servants, she expected anguish in a quick mounting. Gilbert, her husband, was not like that and she was surprised at his tenderness. With stealth he eased quietly to her bed, a specter outline in the dark. Climbing upon the sheets, she sensed his nakedness, the heat of his skin near her, against her. His hands started first, not grabbing nor groping, wandering, touching her gently, caressing her form on the outside of her gown. His hands eased her clothing off and to the floor, and he began kissing her, everywhere. Her eyes went wide open, blinking to the awe of what was happening, from him, with her. And of all things, her body reacted, inner warmth rising to a quaking throughout all areas of her body. In a wet slide followed with a piercing the shout she started to scream he smothered with his mouth and she grabbed his shoulders, clasping, as she cried, quivering to hiccupping sobs...an odd sort of joy, she could not quite explain. As the first beams of daylight streamed through the window casement, her languid smile wished his return. She missed him already. She loved him so completely.

  32.

  HIS LOVE INTEREST NOW sated, and in the subsequent nights to follow, he turned his attention back to the camaraderie of those fellows styled like himself by title and joined them in their merriment. They were all of the noble class who found themselves, by their youth, a mirror to the antics sought by the queen, Marie Antoinette, who had found the court stuffy and dull, her husband the prime example of such boredom. What was left unsaid, though gossiped widely, was the king was not a great performer in the boudoir, none at all in fact, limp as wilted celery, and in failing to secure a male heir immediately after their marriage, and the news sheets condemning her to most of the blame, the queen sought emotional release, public opinion ignored in frivolity.

  To her escapisms, Gilbert La Fayette found himself not only a part of her entourage but one of those who could provide her with amusement. Many times though not in a complimentary fashion he found himself the butt of jokes and tease, as he had experienced in scho
ol. In the beginning, his traits of alleged shyness and his quiet demeanor left him open for those seeking to be witty at someone else’s expense, his. To overcome such tactless treatment and these were not constant torments but when thrown the barbed stings still left pain. His answer, instead of retreat, was to play hard at being accepted.

  Within two years, beginning in the throes of his matrimony to an unexpected yet memorial dinner with an enemy of sorts, the brother of the English king, Gilbert regaled in the glitter and wastrel behavior of the French court, notably among the Queen’s clique. Within this period, something in a parallel development was occurring: Gilbert began to grow up, internally in mind. His desire to win laurels as a military man had not diminished in the slightest, and burned fervently. And more so, it was that he began to take in dribbles of salon orations and coffee house debates and formed opinions to set his character, even if many of the initial kernels of discovery came from his two companions, Marc Noailles and Philippe Segur.

  The three courtiers were part of a greater escapade begun in humor calling themselves the Court Club, as their membership was of young nobles and ladies of the court, who were affixed to the whims and fashion of their Queen, Marie Antoinette. The male personages of these games and frivolity could be named: de Coigny, d’Harvé, de Guémené, de Durfort, the Dillon brothers, Lauzun, and La Marak. And the Marquis de La Fayette and his two favorite companions.

  Top favorite of the Queen was the Comte d’Artois, brother to the king. The youngest of the Club were Marc Antoine Noailles (Gilbert’s brother-in-law) and his brother Philippe (Prince de Poix), Phillipe Segur and his brother and then youngest of all, La Fayette, to be the brunt of tease and jest. [King Louis XVI’s brothers were the Comte de Provence (1755-1824), the future Louis XVIII and the Comte d’Artois (1757-1836) who became Charles X.]

  Where Marc Noailles had the reputation of the greatest of those to party beyond exuberance, he could not match the libertine behavior of the Comte D’Artois among the ladies, and it was left to Segur, the intellectual wit of them all, who filled the post as the mischievous rabble’s master of ceremonies, the circus ring leader, who constructed the entertainment. For example, in February 1774, he had persuaded the Court Club to wear as fashion the style from the reign of Henri IV. It was a short term fad for at a court ball in February, 1774, it was apparent the flamboyant bright multi-colored costumes of ribbons, silk mantles, plumed hats made the youth at the gala more svelte and those of the older generation, more frumpish and corpulent looking awkward as buffoons, perhaps the true point of the fashion exercise.

  Perhaps it is of some observation to note it was at this ball, that Marie Antoinette for the first time took serious note of the young and handsome Swedish count and traveling diplomat Hans Axel von Fersen, who would later become part of the Queen’s entourage as not only a favorite perhaps as a very close admirer, maybe yes or no, to what degree of familiarity was left to debate and whispers.

  The Court Club whirled seeking constant diversions. Dinners and balls were the normal of attended events as were theater or opera, favorites of the Queen. In turn she sought to mollify her own thespian talents by putting on small plays at her private get-away, the Palace Trinon, near Versailles. She enjoyed playing the virtuous or not so virgin milk maid to her favorite at the moment’s turn as the forest hunter. On sunny days choices might be hunts or off to horse racing, betting on the outcome, while after suppers or with inclement weather, there were card games of whist or a backgammon type game called le Grand Trictrac, where checkers usually used were replaced with gold and silver coins.

  With such games, to sustain her amusement the Queen would bet heavily, and when after losing, which was often, her husband, the king, and who never enjoyed cards, would pay her debts without question.

  Of these times, it was Segur who later best summed up their collective conscience: “We only thought of amusements and, led on by pleasure, we gaily ran our course in the middle of balls, fetes, hunts, plays, and concerts, without foreseeing our future destinies.”

  Dancing at the balls, especially masquerades, was another of her favorite past-times and it was in one incident that Gilbert realized the order of society, achieving the height of the pecking order was not to his forte. For it was at such a dance when the Queen and Gilbert while dancing together a cotillion, his Auvergne provincial feet to the musical steps, brought him to stumbling disaster. The Queen laughed at him, perhaps in sincere empathy to his faults, but others saw it as opportune to make the mirth more malicious. Though blushing to this awkwardness others saw his stumbles as his whole character.

  From all this rush of heady times of merriment Gilbert finally began to step back and remember there was ‘himself alone’, the suffering martyr against the odds, the all centered I, and he knew what his world wanted. Only his association to the Noailles name and his wealth by inheritance made him a tolerated member of the Club. In any quiet times of reflection he seemed drowning within this swirling game of libido. The fake smiles when his purse covered the tab at a tavern, it seemed of little worth to him. As he became aware, and he knew it to be true, he was trapped, enjoying and despising at the same time. These satyr times like a young man’s hunger for glory could be equal addictions. He longed for escape but to where that would gain him applause and heroic recognition?

  Another aspect of those who played within the Court Club is that they cared little for the staid bureaucratic politics and the governmental machinery that churned around them. Meaning they gave little notice to the world outside their gilded cage. To them the bad harvests resulting in the high price of flour, that led to bread riots that were occurring this year throughout the provinces and a few protests in Paris did not affect those revelers except to be tidbits of gossip to use as a verbal bridge in the art of conversation, moving one subject to the next, without true acknowledgment of concern.

  One could see this in another Segur presentation. There was some issue about the old Parlements and their powers, and therefore to amuse themselves a parody of the Paris proceedings was decided upon and staged. To Gilbert’s satisfaction he played the part, he thought well, as the Solicitor-General. The elders of the court saw the production as no laughing matter, a mockery to the nobles, put up by a bunch of young radicals (who never saw themselves ‘radical’ to any cause except good-natured exploits). Before the Prime Minister made his complaint to the king, and he did, Segur had gained an audience to His Majesty and turned the story so as to be no more than harmless. The king saw the laughter in such self-mockery and dismissed the episode as youth being only impertinent, not treacherous against the bastions of the government.

  This episode came about from a faction of the Court Club known as the l’ Epee-de-Bois, The Society of the Wooden Sword. They were so called by their association with the Cabaret de l’ Epee-de-Bois, located away from the town limits of Paris in the little village of Porcherons, just at the foot of Montmarte. Its early history set it apart as an artistic meeting place. In 1658 Mazarin, by letters of patent, created a community of masters for dance and violin. Eight years later, in 1669, his then named Royal Dance Academy merged with the Royal Academy of Music to form the Opera which in turn sought larger quarters for performances. Had it remained a commune of the artistic this would have suited Marie Antoinette’s flair for the arts quite well but by 1775 it was merely a drinking establishment known for its debauchery. This also suited the Queen’s nature to be the voyeur. Incognito she came with her fellow Wooden Sword conspirators and they sought pleasure in carousing among themselves and with the lesser quality patrons, what one would call then and now as ‘slumming’.

  It was upon one of these nights of levity that Gilbert was bent on meeting his comrades for another social evening at a café when Adrienne’s maid stopped him in the corridor. He had not seen his wife in a day or two, which was not that unusual due to the closeness her mother still held her to, and for he had heard she had taken to her bed, as he had been told, with ‘bad vapors and a he
adache’. He had thought not to disturb her, let her have rest. She had not been one to be excited too much about the ribald goings on around the Queen, but rather held herself from the palace balls where she, her married sister, and her other sisters might attend and look upon the grandeur. This is not to say Adrienne had any bad will against the Queen or that she might pout if Gilbert went out so much with his friends, and be at risk among the women of temptation surrounding the Queen’s company. Adrienne and Marie Antoinette were proper acquaintances, not friends per se, but young women with mutual understandings of what it was to be ‘dutiful’ to husband and family. Both had been married young, a part of an arranged contract to further advance the prominence of the family lineage and its related powerbase; both accepted their roles as subservient to their husband’s careers (Marie Antoinette less so out of boredom) and both were under pressure, for the good of all, to bear a boy child.

  “Sire,” said the maid, beckoning him towards Adrienne’s door. He was not accustomed to be accosted by a Noailles servant. “Quiet, please, sire.” She gently opened the door to Adrienne’s room. There was little light. Another servant was at Adrienne’s bedside and Gilbert could see she was damping his wife’s face with a wet cloth.

  “What—-?” The servant gave a look that meant for him to maintain his silence. He went to Adrienne’s side and looked down upon her. She seemed feverish, sweating, and ill. Why was he not told?