The details given by the Duke of Doudeauville as to his early years are very characteristic.  He was born in 1765.  He was entrusted to the care of a nurse living two leagues from Paris in a little village, the wife of a post-rider.  His parents, when they came to see him, found “their eighteen-months-old progeny astride of one of the horses of his foster-father.”  Like Henry IV., he was raised roughly, leading the life of a real peasant, running the day long, in sabots, through the snow and ice and mud.  “My nurse, who was retained as maid,” he says, “was a good peasant, and thoroughly proletarian.  Afterwards, transferred to the capital, she there preserved with her simple cap her frank and rustic manners, to the admiration of all who knew her, and esteemed her loyal character and her plain ways.  It is to her, and to her alone, that I am indebted for receiving any religious instruction either in infancy or youth.  Everything about me was wholly foreign to those ideas; my religion was none the less fervent for that.  From my earliest years, being born brave, I felt the vocation of the martyr the most desirable means of being joined to our Father which is in Heaven, and I have always thought that to end one’s days for one’s God, one’s wife and family, was a touching and enviable death.”

The Duke of Doudeauville was still a child, and a little child—­in point of age he was fourteen and a day, in size he was four feet seven inches—­when he was married.  He espoused Mademoiselle de Montmirail, of the family of Louvois, who brought him, with a beauty he did not then prize, a considerable fortune, the rank of grandee of Spain, and, worth more than all, rare and precious qualities.  Nevertheless, the little husband was very sad.  When his approaching marriage was announced to him, he cried out, “Then I can play no longer!” When, after the first interview, he was asked how he liked his fiancee, whose fresh face, oval and full, was charming, he responded:  “She is really very beautiful; she looks like me when I am eating plums.”  Listen to his story of the nuptials.  “Imagine my extreme embarrassment,” he says, “my stupid disappointment, with my excessive bashfulness amid the numerous concourse of visitors and spectators attracted by our wedding.  The grandfather of Mademoiselle de Montmirail, being captain of the Hundred-Swiss, a great part of this corps was there, and, as if to play me a trick, all these Hundred-Swiss were six feet tall, sometimes more.  One would have said, seeing me by the side of them, the giants and the dwarf of the fair.  Every one gazed at the bride, who, although she was only fifteen, was as tall as she was beautiful, and every one was looking for the bridegroom, without suspecting that it was this child, this schoolboy, who was to play the part.”