Rich, a marquis in his own right, married to a daughter of one of the greatest houses of France, Lafayette had the entrance to the highest circles at court, to the innermost circle in fact, that of the young King Louis XVI. and his Queen Marie Antoinette. And never was there a gayer court to be found; the youthful King and his beautiful wife and all their friends seemed to live for pleasure only; they were gorgeous butterflies who flitted about the beautiful gardens of the Palace at Versailles and basked in continual sunshine. But the boy of seventeen, son of a line of rugged Auvergne fighters, men of independent natures, did not take readily to the unceasing show and luxury of court. Balls and dramas, rustic dances and dinners and suppers, all the extravagant entertainments that the clever mind of the young Queen could devise, followed in endless succession. True it was that some of the courtiers had the fashion of talking a good deal about the rights of man and human liberty, but that was simply a fashion in a country where only the nobles had liberty and the talk of such things only furnished polite conversation in drawing-rooms. To Lafayette, however, liberty meant more than that; young though he was, he had seen enough of the world to wish that there might be less suffering among the poor and more liberality among the wealthy. The constant stream of pleasures at Versailles often gave him food for thought, and though he was very fond of the King and Queen and their youthful court, he had less and less regard for the older nobles, who appeared to him as vain and stiff and foolish as so many strutting peacocks. Sometimes, however, for all his thoughtfulness, he joined whole-heartedly in the revels the Queen devised. On one midsummer night Marie Antoinette gave a fête at Versailles, and Lafayette led the revels. The Queen had declared that she meant to have a _fête champêtre_ in the gardens that should be different from anything the court of France had ever seen. All her guests should appear either as goblins or as nymphs. They should not be required to dance the quadrille or any other stately measure, but would be free to play any jokes that came into their heads. As Marie Antoinette outlined these plans to him Lafayette shook his head in doubt. “What will the lords in waiting say to this?” he asked, “and your Majesty’s own ladies?” The pretty Queen laughed and shrugged her shoulders. “Who cares?” she answered. “As long as Louis is King I shall do what pleases me.” Then a new idea occurred to her and she clapped her hands with delight. “I shall go to Louis,” she said, “and have him issue a royal order commanding every one who comes to the fête to dress as a goblin or a nymph. He will do it for me, I know.”