Gilbert scowled at the silly plume, but I was overcome. “What a picture you make, husband . . .” At thirty-two, Gilbert’s once–fiery red hair had darkened to chestnut, but his years sat well on him; he had never been so masculine nor desirable. Yet he flipped the end of his cloth-of-gold cape with disdain. “I should wear black and march with the common people in sympathy.”
Fastening his glittering diamond pin through the lace of his cravat, I said, “Everyone knows none of this would be happening if not for you.”
“They should know it would not be happening but for you,” he replied, touching his forehead to mine. “For standing by me when no one else would. For seeing through what I start . . .”
How happy he made me feel. How loved and appreciated . . . It moved me more than the trumpets heralding the pageantry of that glorious spring day when every budding tree seemed to strain with the nation to blossom into being. First in the procession came the king, resplendent in gold, his cap ornamented by the largest diamond in the realm. “Vive le roi!” people cried, waving from curbsides, windows, and rooftops. Then came the queen in silver. “Vive la reine!” was heard, though not as warmly.
From a balcony, pressed between my sisters all straining to see, I added my voice to the cries of rejoicing, for there was no holding back the tides of change now . . .
A month and a half later, while rain poured down upon Versailles in buckets, the deputies found their hall locked, and the defiant reformers splashed their way to the royal tennis court to vow never to separate, and to meet wherever circumstances demand, until a constitution of the kingdom is established and affirmed on solid foundations.
A week later, the king gave in.
France would at last have a constitutional monarchy. A government by and for the people with a declaration of rights—and my husband was determined to write that declaration. I cannot describe the mood that night. I lost count of toasts, and with the American delegation, I became giddy as a girl on champagne. Alone amongst them, only the peg-legged Gouverneur Morris refused to join in our jubilation.
Mr. Morris had written the preamble to the new Constitution of the United States and was, therefore, worthy of the hospitality always afforded to him. But he was also a sybaritic fellow, better known for furtive love affairs in the shadows of the Louvre than he was for enlightened ideals. And that night he warned we were plunging headlong into destruction, adding that the history and character of the French does not mold itself so easily to liberty.
This was too much to bear in silence, and with a rather overfilled glass of wine, I said, “Surely you do not mean to say that we French are somehow inferior in character to you Americans . . .”
Morris drank deeply of his red claret. “I don’t think you understand the forces you are toying with, or the sorts of people waiting to take advantage.”
It astonished me to think a man who had lived in France less than a year might consider himself such an expert. “Sir, the alternative to reform is letting our people freeze and starve . . .”
Morris laughed. “None of the beggars I’ve seen complain to me of cold. They all ask for a morsel of bread, and by bread they mean wine, and by wine they mean liquor.”
His lack of compassion startled me; perhaps he had not seen the true suffering I had witnessed in visiting prisons and almshouses, or in the countryside near Chavaniac. Or perhaps he did not wish to see it. As so many in my class did not wish to see. “You are an aristocrat, sir.”
Morris laughed again. “If I am the aristocrat here, Madame Lafayette, what does that make you?”
“I suppose it makes me the American.”
Lafayette guffawed at that, eyes shining with pride.
“Touché!” Morris refilled his glass. “Forgive me. My opinions are drawn only from human nature and ought not therefore to have much respect in this age of refinement.”
I did not like how he mocked us. And it vexed me to learn he was being considered as the replacement for the inspiring Minister Jefferson, who, after years of service in France, was now keen to return with his daughters to Virginia. We would be sorry to see the Jeffersons go, something I expressed with emotion on the Fourth of July celebration at the American embassy.
There Jefferson kissed my hand. “How sorry we are to quit your country, madame, but after five years, I sorely miss mine.”
He invited me, with all sincerity, to visit Monticello, his mountaintop estate in Virginia, and left us with silhouettes of his image to remember him by. “I hope I will be remembered as having been of some service to your husband in drafting a declaration of rights for France.”