The supreme characteristic of the man showed early in the boy when, at only eight years of age, he became possessed of an unselfish impulse to go out and perform a feat which for one so young would have been heroic. It was reported in the castle that a dangerous hyena was prowling about in the vicinity of the estate, terrifying everybody. The boy's sympathy was roused, and, from the moment he first heard of it, his greatest longing was to meet the cruel creature and have it out with him. It is not recorded that the eight-year-old boy ever met that wild animal face to face, and it is well for the world that he did not. He was preserved to stand up against other and more significant spoilers of the world's welfare. His education was begun under the care of his mother, assisted by his grandmother, a woman of unusually strong character; these, together with two aunts, formed a group whose memory was tenderly revered by Lafayette to the end of his life. The boy Lafayette cared a great deal for hunting. Writing back to a cousin at home after he had been sent to Paris to school, he told her that what he would most like to hear about when she wrote to him would be the great events of the hunting season. His cousin, it appears, had written him an account of a hunt in the neighborhood, but she had not written enough about it to satisfy his desire. Why did she not give details? he asked. He reproachfully added that if he had been writing to her of a new-fashioned cap, he would have taken compass in hand and described it with mathematical accuracy. This she should have done concerning the great hunt if she had really wished to give him pleasure! This fortunate boy could select any career he liked; courtier, lawyer, politician, writer, soldier--whatever he chose. Never came opportunity more richly laden to the doorway of any youth. He chose to be a soldier. The double-barred doors of iron, the lofty, protected windows, the military pictures on the walls of his home--all spoke to the Chaviniac child of warfare and conflict. There was the portrait of his father in cuirass and helmet. There were far-away ancestors in glistening armor and laced jackets. There was also the military portrait of that Gilbert Motier de Lafayette who was marshal in the time of Charles VII, and whose motto "Cur non" (Why not?) was chosen by Lafayette for his own when he started on his first voyage. The instinct for warfare, for the organization of armies, for struggle and conquest, were strong in him, and were fostered and nourished by every impression of his boyhood's home. CHAPTER II COLLEGE AND COURT In the year 1768 the boy Lafayette, then eleven years old, left his mountain home and went to Paris, where he was placed by his mother in the College du Plessis, a school for boys of the nobility.