Lafayette was very much disturbed at the thought, and secretly determined to defeat the plan. Before the position was finally offered him he went to a masked ball, and learning which was the Duc de Provence in disguise, went up to him and spoke republican sentiments which were not at all to the nobleman's liking. Then the boy allowed the masked man to recognize him. The Duc said sharply that he should remember the interview. Thereupon young Lafayette made him a profound bow and replied calmly that memory was often called the wit of fools. This, of course, ended the chance of his preferment in the royal household, and the boy was freed from what he considered an irksome task. As a result however he was no longer popular at court, and soon asked that he might be allowed to go back to his distant castle in Auvergne until he was old enough to take his place in the army. His guardians were glad to have him safely out of the way for a time, and granted his request. So for a year the little Marie Jean Paul de Lafayette went back to his mountain home and browsed in his father's library and rode over his estates. He liked the peasants in the country. They were a brighter race, not so sullen and discontented as the people in the streets of Paris, but even here, far from Versailles, the boy heard much of the frightful poverty of the people and the gross extravagance of the court. It made him think, and the more he considered the matter the more he thought the people's claims were just. At the end of a year the boy went back to Paris and married the girl to whom he had been betrothed. He was sixteen, she fourteen, but the Duchess considered that the boy had shown that he was neither a spendthrift nor a fool, and that her daughter could be trusted to him. So the two, scarcely more than school children, opened their residence in Paris, and took their place in that gay world which was riding so rapidly to its downfall. Meanwhile news was constantly coming to France concerning the glorious stand which the American colonists were making against England. The love of liberty was strong in the boy's heart, and the desire to help the colonists soon came to be his greatest wish. Beneath his reserved manner and his silent habits there lay the greatest enthusiasm, and the most determined character. He soon had concluded that there was little hope of winning laurels in the regiment of Black Musketeers, and he cast his eyes longingly across the seas to where real fighting was taking place; but when he told his wish to his friends they all opposed him. He went to an old general who had long been a friend of his family, and urged him to help him in his plan to go to America. "Ah, my boy!" said the general, "I have seen your uncle die in the Italian wars. I saw your father killed at Minden. I will not help in the ruin of the last member of your family. You would only risk life and fortune over there without any chance of reward."