THE WIFE OF LAFAYETTE. 501 He tried in vain to dissuade the young man from a purpose which seemed to him most rash and chimerical. One person that favored his purpose was his beautiful young wife, already the mother of one child and soon to be the mother of a second. She, with the spirit and .devotion natural to a French lady of eighteen, entered heartily into the very difficult business of getting off her young husband to win glory for both by fighting for the American insurgents. Anastasie de Noailles was her maiden name. She was the daughter of a house which had eight centuries of recorded history, and which, in each of these centuries, had given to France soldiers or priests of national importance and European renown. The chateau of Noailles (near the city of Toul), portions of which date as far back as A. D. 1050, was the cradle of the race : and to-day in Paris there is a Duke de Noailles, and a Marquis de Noailles, descendants of that- Pierre de Noailles who was lord of the old chateau three hundred and fifty years before America was discovered. Old as her family was, Mademoiselle de Noailles was one of the youngest brides, as her Marquis was one of the youngest husbands. An American company would have smiled to see a boy of sixteen and a half years of age, presenting himself at the altar to be married to a girl of fourteen. We must beware, however, of sitting in judg- ment on people of other climes and other times. Lafay- ette was a great match. His father had fallen in the battle of Minden, when the boy was two years of age, leaving no other heir. It is a curious fact that the officer who commanded the battery from which the ball was fired that killed Lafayette's father, was the same General Phillips with whom the son was so actively engaged in "Virginia, during the summer of 1781. The mother of our marquis died ten years after her
