“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. This suited the Duchess better. “If the boy is brought up in our home where I can see and study him,” she said, “I will agree. Then, having taken all precautions, and having no negligence wherewith to reproach ourselves, we need do nothing but peacefully submit to the will of God, who knows best what is fitting for us.” The shy boy came to the Duke’s house and met the little girl. Adrienne was very attractive, sweet-natured, pretty, and delightful company. Before the two knew the plans that had been made concerning them they grew to like each other very much, became splendid companions, and were glad when they learned that they were to marry some day. As for Adrienne’s mother, the more she saw of the boy the better she liked him; she took him into her house and heart as if he were her own son, trying to make up to him for the loss of his own mother. The Duke kept his agreement. He saw that Lafayette was properly educated at the Academy at Versailles where young noblemen were taught military duties and that in proper time he obtained his commission as an officer in the royal regiment of the Black Musketeers. Then, on April 11, 1774, Lafayette and Adrienne were married. The groom was sixteen years old and the bride fourteen, but those were quite proper ages for marriage among the French nobility. For a year the young husband and wife lived at the great house of the Duke d’Ayen in Paris, still under the watchful eye of the careful Duchess, and then they took a house for themselves in the capital, going occasionally to the old castle of Chavaniac in Auvergne. The boy Marquis never regretted his marriage to Adrienne. Through all the adventures of his later life his love for her was strong and enduring. And she was as fine and noble and generous a woman as Lafayette was a brave, heroic man.