ays that of an honest man,
a good Frenchman, a servant of God, desiring a Christian close to an
honorable life, the crown of every human edifice."

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, b