The Rat was born in the lands belonging to the de Pus family. The Duke de Puce was especially merciful to his mother, exempting her from taxes, so that neither she nor the child ever knew poverty. One day, a messenger arrived at their house and said that the real father of the Rat was the Duke de Puce himself, in whose house the young man’s mother had once served. The entire de Pus family died tragically in a shipwreck, and the only heir to the title and lands was the Rat himself