Immediately the proud and luxury-loving society of the French court took a great interest in Gilbert Motier de Lafayette. Every father and mother who had a daughter they wished to marry turned their attention to the boy. And Lafayette, who, like most boys of his age, paid little attention to girls, was beset with all sorts of invitations to parties and balls.
In Europe in those days marriages were arranged by parents with little regard to the wishes of their children. Sometimes babies of noble families were betrothed to each other while they were still in the cradle. It was all a question of social standing and of money. So Lafayette’s guardians put their heads together and looked around for the most suitable girl for him to marry.
The guardians chose the second daughter of the Duke d’Ayen, Mademoiselle Marie-Adrienne-Françoise de Noailles, a girl twelve years old. The Duke was pleased with the proposal; the Marquis de Lafayette would make a most desirable husband for his daughter. But the little girl’s mother had strong ideas of her own. When the Duke told her of the husband selected for Marie-Adrienne she objected.
“It is too great a risk to run for Adrienne,” she said. “The Marquis de Lafayette is very young, very rich, and very wilful. He seems to be a good boy, so far as his standing at school and his conduct in society are concerned; but with no one to guide him, no one to look after his fortune and hold him back from extravagance and foolishness, without a near relative, and with his character as yet unformed and uncertain, our daughter’s marriage to him is out of the question, and I will not agree to it.”
Both the Duke and the Duchess were strong-willed; Adrienne’s father insisted on the match and her mother opposed it more and more positively. At last they actually quarreled and almost separated over this question of the marriage of two children, neither of whom had been consulted in regard to their own feelings. At last, however, the Duke suggested a compromise; the marriage should not take place for two years, Adrienne should not leave her mother for three years, and in the meantime the Duke would look after the education of the boy and see that he became a suitable husband for their daughter.