When but twenty years of age, Monseigneur was a captain under Charles X.In 1830, when only four-and-twenty, he resigned his position in the army, and it is said that from that time until he was forty years of age he led an adventurous life, travelling everywhere and having many strange experiences.

At last, one evening, he met, at the house of a friend in the country, the daughter of the Count de Valencay, Mademoiselle Pauline, very wealthy, marvellously beautiful, and scarcely nineteen years of age, twenty-two years younger than himself.

He fell violently in love with her, and, as she returned his affection, there was no reason why the marriage should not take place at once.

He then bought the ruins of Hautecoeur for a mere song--ten thousand francs, I believe--with the intention of repairing the Chateau and installing his wife therein when all would be in order and in readiness to receive her.

In the meanwhile they went to live on one of his family estates in Anjou, scarcely seeing any of their friends, and finding in their united happiness the days all too short.