Charles found in the old comrade of his marching days one of those rare hearts into which a man can pour his griefs while telling his joys.
The young Provencal had met the fate which attends all handsome bachelors.

In 1804, at Frankfort on the Main, he was adored by Bettina Wallenrod, only daughter of a banker, and he married her with all the more enthusiasm because she was rich and a noted beauty, while he was only a lieutenant with no prospects but the extremely problematical future of a soldier of fortune of that day.

Old Wallenrod, a decayed German baron (there is always a baron in a German bank) delighted to know that the handsome lieutenant was the sole representative of the Mignon de La Bastie, approved the love of the blonde Bettina, whose beauty an artist (at that time there really was one in Frankfort) had lately painted as an ideal head of Germany.

Wallenrod invested enough money in the French funds to give his daughter thirty thousand francs a year, and settled it on his anticipated grandsons, naming them counts of La Bastie-Wallenrod.

This "dot" made only a small hole in his cash-box, the value of money being then very low.