He first saw the light in prison, born of a widow who was accused of having poisoned her husband.[3] Married himself when very young to the lovely Charlotte de Montmorency, the constable's daughter, he had had for a rival that too lusty and too venerable gallant, Henri IV. The young princess was a flirt. The prince kidnapped his wife. The king was accused of seeking to make war on Belgium for giving her shelter. The charge was at once true and false; the king was madly in love, but Condé, pretending a jealousy of which he was incapable, exploited the king's passion to the advantage of his ambition, and forced the king to take harsh measures against a rebel. Unlucky in his family relations, in war and in politics, Monsieur le Prince consoled himself for everything by love of wealth, and, when the terrible ministry of Richelieu supervened, he was living very quietly, rich and unhonored, in his good town of Bourges and in his fine château of Saint-Amand-Montrond. But, at the time when our rector Poulain, after six weeks of manœuvring and intriguing, succeeded in finding his way into his presence, Monsieur le Prince had not renounced all political ambition, and he was still to play his rôle of vulture during the death agony of the Calvinist party and that of the royal power, hoping to rise on the ruins of both. The rector thought that he was perfectly well aware what sort of man he had to deal with. He judged him by the reputation of a _good_ prince which he had made for himself at Bourges; familiar, condescending, talking to everybody without arrogance, playing with the school children of the town and cheating them, very fond of gifts, gossipy, stingy, whimsical and exceedingly pious. The prince had all those qualities; but he had them in much greater degree than anyone as yet supposed. History declares that he was too fond of the society of children. He cheated from avarice and not simply for amusement; he did not follow the example of Henri IV., who returned the money. He was passionately fond of gifts; was a gossip from envy and evil-mindedness; he was avaricious to frenzy, whimsical to superstition, pious to atheism. Lenet in his panegyric, says of him most ingenuously, or rather most maliciously: