The Boys Life of Lafayette 4

The Boys Life of Lafayette 4

To outward appearance it was a time of hope. Population was increasing

rapidly; inventions and new discoveries were being made every day.

[Pg 22]"More truths concerning the external world were discovered in

France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all

preceding periods together," says Buckle. Even in the lifetime of the

old king it had been impossible to stem the tide of progress: what more

natural than to believe these blessings would continue, now that his

evil influence was removed?

 

Not only had discoveries been made; they had been brought within the

reach of more people than ever before. About the time Lafayette was

born the first volume of a great book called the _Encyclopedia_ had

made its appearance in the French language, modeled after one already

produced in England. Priests had denounced it; laws had been made

ordering severe penalties for its use. But it was too valuable to be

given up and volume after volume continued to appear. Voltaire wrote an

audacious imaginary account of the way it was used in the palace. The

king's favorite did not know how to mix her rouge; the king's ministers

wanted to learn about gunpowder. The forbidden book was sent for. A

procession of lackeys staggered into the room, bending under the weight

of twenty huge volumes, and everybody found the information desired.

The bit of audacity hid a great truth. The _Encyclopedia_ had brought

knowledge to the people and all were anxious to profit by it.

 

"The people," however, were not considered by nobles who lived

in palaces. Indeed, they were only beginning to consider

themselves--beginning dimly to comprehend that their day was dawning.

[Pg 23]Two decades would have to pass before they were fully awake,

but the scene was already being set for their great drama. Paris, the

largest city in France, had increased in size one-third during the past

twenty-five years. The old theory had been that too large a town was a

public menace, both to health and to government. Nine times already in

its history the limits of Paris had been fixed and had been outgrown.

It now held between seven hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand

souls. When viewed from the tower of Notre Dame it spread out ten or

twelve miles in circumference, round as an orange, and cut into two

nearly equal parts by the river Seine.

 

"One is a stranger to one's neighbor in this vast place," a man wrote

soon after this. "Sometimes one learns of his death only by receiving

the invitation to his funeral." "Two celebrated men may live in this

city twenty-five years and never meet." "So many chimneys send forth

warmth and smoke that the north wind is tempered in passing over the

town." Streets were so narrow and houses so high that dwellers on

the lower floors "lived in obscurity"; while elsewhere there were

palaces like the great house belonging to the De Noailles family with

its garden large enough to stage a small hunt. Such gardens were

carefully walled away from the public. These walled-in gardens and the

high, evil-smelling houses in which people lived "three hundred years

behind the times," crowded together and hungry from birth to death,

were equally prophetic of the awakening to come; for the improvements

[Pg 24]celebrated by this writer in describing old Paris were either

of a kind to let light in upon the people or to make conditions more

intolerable for them.

 

Advertising signs no longer creaked from iron gibbets, threatening to

tumble and crush the passers-by. Spurs as big as cartwheels and the

huge gloves and giant boots which formerly proclaimed the business

carried on under them had been banished or were now screwed securely

to the walls, which gave the streets a clean-shaven appearance. The

candle lanterns that used to splutter and drip and go out, leaving

Paris in darkness, were replaced, on nights when the moon was off duty,

by lamps burning "tripe-oil" and fitted with reflectors. By means of

this brilliant improvement fashionable quarters were almost safe after

nightfall, whereas in former years there had been danger of attack and

robbery, even within pistol-shot of the grand home where Lafayette

went to live after his marriage. In addition to the lights glowing

steadily under their reflectors--one light to every seventy or one

hundred inhabitants--there were many professional lantern-bearers whose

business in life was escorting wayfarers to and from their homes. Paris

after nightfall was atwinkle, for "to live by candle-light is a sign of

opulence."

 

There was a fire department, newly installed, ready to come on call,

and, strange to say, "it cost absolutely nothing to be rescued."

That, however, was the only cheap thing in Paris. "The poorer one

is the more it costs to live!" was a cry that rose then, as now,

[Pg 25]in all its bitterness. With money anything could be bought.

Voltaire declared that a Roman general on the day of his triumph never

approached the luxury to be found here. Wares came to the city from

the ends of the earth, and Parisians invented new wares of their own.

Somebody had contrived umbrellas like those used in the Orient, except

that these folded up when not in use. Somebody else had invented the

business of renting them at a charge of two liards to gallants crossing

the Pont Neuf who wished to shield their complexions. There were

little stations at each end of the bridge where the money could be

paid or the umbrella given up. Even seasons of the year set no limit

to extravagance in Paris. "A bouquet of violets in the dead of winter

costs two louis (about nine dollars), and some women wear them!"

 

Water was delivered daily to the tall houses, from carts, by a force of

twenty thousand men, who carried it as high as the seventh floor for

a trifle more than it cost to cross the Pont Neuf under the shade of

an umbrella. Drivers sent their water-carts skidding over the slime,

for the narrow, cobble-paved streets were black with slippery mud.

Coaches and other vehicles swung around corners and dashed along at

incredible speed, while pedestrians fled in every direction. There were

no sidewalks and no zones of safety. The confusion was so great that

dignified travel by sedan-chair had become well-nigh impossible. King

Louis XV once said, "If I were chief of police I would forbid coaches";

but, being only King Louis, he had done nothing. Pedestrians were often

[Pg 26]run down; then there would be even greater confusion for a few

moments, but only the shortest possible halt to traffic. "When on the

pavements of Paris it is easy to see that the people do not make the

laws," said one who had suffered.

 

These people who suffered in Paris at every turn were now beginning to

find a cyclopedia of their own in another invention of comparatively

recent date--the cafés, warmed and lighted, where even men who had

not sous enough to satisfy their hunger might cheat their stomachs

with a thimbleful of sour wine or a morsel of food, and sit for hours

listening and pondering the talk of others who came and went. There was

much talk, and in one part of Paris or another it touched upon every

known subject. Each café had its specialty; politics in one, philosophy

in another, science in a third. Men of the same cast of mind gravitated

toward the same spot. Cafés had already become schools. Soon they were

to become political clubs. It was a wonderful way to spread new ideas.

 

Some of the cafés were very humble, some very expensive, but none were

strictly fashionable. To be seen dining in such a place indicated that

a man had no invitations to dinner, so the eighteen or twenty thousand

fops who, curled and perfumed, went from house to house cared little

for cafés. They ate like grasshoppers, through the welcome of one

host on Monday and another on Tuesday, and so down the week, "knowing

neither the price of meat nor of bread, and consuming not one-quarter

of that which was set before them," while thousands went hungry--which

[Pg 27]is the reason that after a time the men in the cafés rose

and took a terrible revenge. Paris was by no means all France, but

whatever Paris did and felt the other towns were doing also; and slowly

but surely the passions animating them would make their way to the

loneliest peasant hut on the remotest edge of the kingdom.

 

Thus, while the nobles in their gardens still dreamed pleasantly of

the power that was passing from them, the people were slowly rousing

from torpor to resentment. It is well to linger over these conditions

in order to understand fully all that Lafayette's acts meant in the

society in which he moved. He was not one of the twenty thousand fops,

but he belonged to the fortunate class to whom every door seemed open

during the early years of the new reign. His military duties were

agreeable and light, he had plenty of money, a charming wife, powerful

family connections, and he was admitted to the inmost circle at court.

If he had longings to experiment with the democratic theories set forth

by radical authors like Rousseau, even that was not forbidden him.

Their writings had attracted much attention and had already brought

about increased liberality of manners. While the court at Versailles

and the city of Paris were very distinct, Paris being only a huge town

near at hand, the distance between them was but fourteen miles, and

it was quite possible for young men like Lafayette to go visiting, so

to speak, in circles not their own. Lafayette's friend, the Comte de

Ségur, has left a picture of life as the young men of their circle knew

it.

 

[Pg 28]"Devoting all our time to society, _fêtes_, and pleasure, ... we

enjoyed at one and the same time all the advantages we had inherited

from our ancient institutions, and all the liberty permitted by new

fashions. The one ministered to our vanity, the other to our love of

pleasure. In our castles, among our peasants, our guards, and our

bailiffs, we still exercised some vestiges of our ancient feudal

power. At court and in the city we enjoyed all the distinctions of

birth. In camp our illustrious names alone were enough to raise us to

superior command, while at the same time we were at perfect liberty to

mix unhindered and without ostentation with all our co-citizens and

thus to taste the pleasures of plebeian equality. The short years of

our springtime of life rolled by in a series of illusions--a kind of

well-being which could have been ours, I think, at no other age of the

world."

 

 

[Pg 29]IV

 

AN UNRULY COURTIER

 

 

During the winter after Adrienne's marriage the Duchesse d'Ayen took

her two daughters regularly to the balls given each week by the queen,

and after the balls invited the friends of her sons-in-law to supper,

in a pathetically conscientious effort to make the home of the De

Noailles a more agreeable place for the husbands of her children than

it had been for her own. Adrienne inherited much of her mother's

seriousness, but she was young enough to enjoy dancing, and, feeling

that duty as well as inclination smiled upon this life, she was very

happy. In December of that year her first child was born, a daughter

who was named Henriette.

 

Lafayette tells us in his _Memoirs_ that he did not feel thoroughly

at ease in the gay society Marie Antoinette drew about her. Nor did