So the lad grew from babyhood in an atmosphere of much ceremony and
very little luxury. On the whole, his was a happy childhood, though by
no means gay. He loved the women who cherished him so devotedly. In his
_Memoirs_, written late in life, he calls them "tender and venerated
relatives." They looked forward to the day when in his turn he should
become a soldier, dreading it, as women will, but accepting it, as
such women do, in the spirit of _noblesse oblige_, believing it the
one possible calling for a young man of his station. To prepare him
for it he was trained in manly exercises, by means of which he outgrew
the delicacy of his earliest years and became tall and strong for his
age. He was trained also in horsemanship, to which he took kindly, for
he loved all spirited animals. In books, to which he did not object,
[Pg 8]though he was never wholly a scholar, he followed such studies as
could be taught him by the kindly Abbé Feyon, his tutor.
On his rides, when he met the ragged, threadbare people who lived among
the hills, they saluted him and looked upon him almost with a sense of
ownership. Was he not one of their Lafayettes who had been fighting
and dying gallantly for hundreds of years? As for him, his friendly,
boyish eyes looked a little deeper through their rags into their
sterling peasant hearts than either he or they realized. In the old
manor-house his day-dreams were all of "riding over the world in search
of reputation," he tells us; a reputation to be won by doing gallant
deeds. "You ask me," we read in his _Memoirs_, "at what time I felt
the earliest longings for glory and liberty. I cannot recall anything
earlier than my enthusiasm for tales of heroism. At the age of eight
my heart beat fast at thought of a hyena which had done some damage
and made even more noise in the neighborhood. The hope of meeting that
beast animated all my excursions." Had the encounter taken place, it
might have been thrilling in the extreme. It might even have deprived
history of a bright page; for it was nothing less than hunger which
drove such beasts out of the woods in winter to make raids upon lonely
farms--even to terrify villagers at the very gates of Chavaniac.
[Pg 9]II