The idea that the Comte de Laperouse, one of the smartest officers in
the French King's navy, should marry out of his rank and station,
shocked his relatives and friends as much as it would have done if he
had been detected picking pockets.
He could not, without grave risk of
social and professional ruin, marry until he had obtained the
consent of his father, and - so naval regulations required - of his
official superiors. Both were firmly refused. Monsieur de Ternay, who
commanded on the Ile-de-France station, shook his wise head, and told
the lover "that his love fit would pass, and that people did not
console themselves for being poor with the fact that they were
married." (This M. de Ternay, it may be noted, had commanded a French
squadron in Canada in 1762, and James Cook was a junior officer on the
British squadron which blockaded him in St. John's Harbour. He managed
to slip out one night, much to the disgust of Colville, the British
Admiral, who commented scathingly on his "shameful flight.")
The father of Laperouse poured out his forbidding warnings in a long
letter. Listen to the "tut-tut" of the old gentleman at Albi: -
"You make me tremble, my son. How can you face with coolness the
consequences of a marriage which would bring you into disgrace with the
Minister and would lose you the assistance of powerful friends? You
would forfeit the sympathies of your colleagues and would sacrifice the
fruit of your work during twenty years. In disgracing yourself you
would humiliate your family and your parents. You would prepare for
yourself nothing but remorse; you would sacrifice your fortune and
position to a frivolous fancy for beauty and to pretended charms which
perhaps exist only in your own imagination. Neither honour nor probity
compels you to meet ill-considered engagements that you may have
made with that person or with her parents. Do they or you know that you
are not free, that you are under my authority?" He went on to draw a
picture of the embarrassments that would follow such a marriage, and
then there is a passage revealing the cash-basis aspect of the old
gentleman's objection: "You say that there are forty officers in the
Marine who have contracted marriages similar to that which you propose
to make. You have better models to follow, and in any case what was
lacking on the side of birth, in these instances, was compensated by
fortune. Without that balance they would not have had the baseness and
imprudence to marry thus." Poor Eleonore had no compensating balance of
that kind in her favour. She was only beautiful, charming and
sweet-natured. Therefore, "tut-tut, my son!"
In the course of the next few months Laperouse covered himself with
glory by his services on the AMAZON, the ASTREE, and the SCEPTRE, and
he hoped that these exploits would incline his father to accede to his
ardent wish.
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