Louis de Buade, Count Frontenac, the subject of this narrative, felt early in life a call to arms. The Thirty Years' War broke out in 1618; and when France, in 1635, under the astute guidance of Cardinal Richelieu, interfered on the Protestant side, Frontenac, then fifteen years of age, was sent to Holland to serve under the Prince of Orange. He seems to have acquitted himself with bravery and distinction in many different sieges and engagements both in the Low Countries and in Italy. He was wounded many times: at the siege of Orbitello in 1646 he had an arm broken. In this year he was raised to the rank of _marechal de camp_, or brigadier-general. Three years before, at the age of twenty-three, he had been made colonel of the regiment of Normandy. His service appears to have been continuous, or nearly so, till the war was brought to a conclusion in 1648 by the Peace of Westphalia. In the year mentioned we find him resting from the alarms and fatigues of war in his father's house on the Quai des Celestins at Paris. Close by lived an attractive young lady of sixteen, daughter of a certain M. de la Grange-Trianon, Sieur de Neuville, with whom, as became his age and profession, the returned warrior fell deeply in love. His passion was returned sufficiently to lead the young lady, when her father's consent could not be obtained, to marry her suitor at one of the churches in Paris authorized to solemnize marriages, in more or less urgent cases, without the consent of parents. The marriage was not a happy one. Madame de Frontenac soon conceived a positive aversion for her husband, and they seem, at a very early period, to have ceased to live together, though not before the birth of a son. The child was placed in the charge of a village nurse, and little more is heard of him, except that when he grew up he embraced the profession of arms, and died, it is not certain how, at a comparatively early age. The mother joined the train of Mademoiselle de Montpensier. These were the days of the Fronde--the abortive rebellion against the fiscal iniquities of Mazarin during the minority of Louis XIV--and in following the fortunes of her patroness, whose father, the king's uncle, had joined the opposition, the young countess had some strange adventures.