Monsieur and Madame de Lafayette! What magic there was in the new title. How proudly the young couple, scarcely more than children yet, but now husband and wife, bore themselves, as they returned from the church to the Hôtel de Noailles, to take up their residence there, according to the promise made to Madame D'Ayen before she would consent to the marriage. They would have preferred a home of their own, but when shortly after their marriage Lafayette's regiment was ordered to Metz, and broken-hearted little Adrienne was left behind, she found it very comforting to be where she could child-wise sob out her loneliness on the shoulder of her sympathetic mother. Poor little Adrienne,--well it was that you could not see into the future with its many harder separations! With the return of Lafayette the pretty bride began to lead a life much gayer than any she had ever led before, for she and her young husband, because they belonged to two such famous families, became now a part of the gay little set ruled by the caprices of Queen Marie Antoinette. That first winter after their marriage the young couple went constantly to balls and late suppers, to the opera and the play,--were in fact in a constant whirl of amusement, which had the charm of novelty to them both, and Lafayette, who had always, even as a boy, been a favourite at Court, was still popular and still called "The big boy with the red hair." He was always awkward, and conspicuous for his height, as well as his clumsiness, and danced as badly as Adrienne did well, which mortified him greatly, having discovered which, Queen Marie Antoinette would often in a spirit of mischief order him to appear on the floor, and then tease him mercilessly about his awkwardness. He was different too in many ways from the courtiers with whom he was thrown, and his dominant passion even then, at nineteen, was the ambition of a true patriot, only waiting to be turned into its fitting channel. Both he and Adrienne enjoyed the gaiety and lack of responsibility of those first months of their married life, but more than the frivolity, Adrienne enjoyed sitting at home with her husband and friends while they discussed great national affairs, and later she loved best to slip upstairs and care for the little daughter who came to be her especial joy,--and so, absorbed in a variety of interests, the first two years of Madame Adrienne's married life slipped away, and at sixteen we find her as pretty and as slender as ever, but with a deeper tenderness and gravity in her brown eyes.