Lafayette tells us in his _Memoirs_ that he did not feel thoroughly at ease in the gay society Marie Antoinette drew about her. Nor did the queen altogether approve of him, because of his silence and an awkwardness which did not measure up to the standards of deportment she had set for this circle of intimate friends. "I was silent," he says, "because I did not hear anything which seemed worth repeating; and I certainly had no thoughts of my own worthy of being put into [Pg 30]words." Some of his friends, who knew him better than the queen, realized that there was plenty of fire in him, in spite of his cold manner and slow speech. De Ségur was one of these, for at some period of his youth Lafayette, smitten with sudden and mistaken jealousy, had spent nearly an entire night trying to persuade De Ségur to fight a duel with him about a beauty for whom De Ségur did not care at all. Adrienne's family, wishing to do their best by him, tried to secure a place for him in the household of the prince who afterward became Louis XVIII. Lafayette did not want to hurt their feelings; neither did he fancy himself in the rôle they had chosen for him, where he believed he would be forced to govern his actions by another man's opinions. He kept his own counsel,but, "in order to save his independence," managed to have the prince overhear a remark which he made with the deliberate purpose of angering him. The office was of course given to some one else, and another bit of ill will went to swell the breezes blowing over the terraces at Versailles.