As a matter of course, therefore, he was looked upon as a miser, and a victim to the sordid vice of avarice.
His past life might, in some degree, offer an explanation of this conduct.

Born in 1780, the Duke de Champdoce had joined the band of emigrants which swelled the ranks of Conde's army.

An implacable opposer of the Revolution, he resided, during the glorious days of the Empire, in London, where dire poverty compelled him to gain a livelihood as a fencing master at the Restoration.

He came back with the Bourbons to his native land, and, by an almost miraculous chance, was put again in possession of his ancestral domains.

But in his opinion he was living in a state of utter destitution as compared to the enormous revenues enjoyed by the dead-and-gone members of the Champdoce family; and what pained him more was to see rise up by the side of the old aristocracy a new race which had attached itself to commerce and entered into business transactions.