Madame De Lafayette And Her Family

Madame De Lafayette And Her Family. CHAPTER I - In this day, when the white light of historical research has fallen on even the most obscure characters, bringing into prominence those details which, for the sake of bygone reputations, were better deep buried in the past of the oblivion, it is more than remarkable that the wife of that world-renowned man, the Marquis de Lafayette, should remain practically unknown. Had she been one of those fair, frail women, an extravagant mistress, whose slender fingers meddled in the skein of political intrigue, we should know her intimately merely from her connection with so famous a character. The most trivial de tails of her personality would be at our tongues endher preferred colour, the perfume which wafted from her silken skirts, and long ago me should have been possessed of that intimate knowledge which we have gleaned anent the various ladies of that epoch. Being his wife, the mother of his children, she is, to the present generation, hidden by the mists of indifferent obscurity. By her contemporaries, Adrienne de Noailles, Marquise de Lafa ette, was known and highly esteemed for the qualities which made her stand first among those of her day as a pure and undefiled type of the finest womanhood...