The face was horribly disfigured by a large transversal scar which had the appearance of a second mouth on the right cheek.
At the age of thirty-three the count, anxious to distinguish himself in that unhappy religious war the signal for which was given on Saint-Bartholomew's day, had been grievously wounded at the siege of Rochelle.

The misfortune of this wound increased his hatred against the partisans of what the language of that day called "the Religion," but, by a not unnatural turn of mind, he included in that antipathy all handsome men.

Before the catastrophe, however, he was so repulsively ugly that no lady had ever been willing to receive him as a suitor.

The only passion of his youth was for a celebrated woman called La Belle Romaine.

The distrust resulting from this new misfortune made him suspicious to the point of not believing himself capable of inspiring a true passion; and his character became so savage that when he did have some successes in gallantry he owed them to the terror inspired by his cruelty.