No one knows why or how the Marquis' life ended up in this miserable state. He had inherited the power accumulated by his father, the first Marquis, through his business as a "pitiless slave trader " (34). In a flashback to his childhood, the Marquis is a slow learner, and illiterate until adolescence. At twenty, he falls in love with one of the female inmates at the Divina Pastora, Dulce Olivia, whose singing and yelling he's grown up hearing from his bedroom. Dulce Olivia is the only child in a family who make saddles for kings, and, therefore must learn the trade so that it doesn't "die out with her" (34). This "incursion into a man's trade" (34) is used to explain her madness and penchant for eating her own excrement. Despite her madness, she and the Marquis fall in love. She begins to write and send him notes on paper that she folds into tiny birds. The Marquis learns to read and write so that he can communicate with her. 

When the Marquis' father finds out about this, he orders his son to publicly deny his love for Dulce Olivia. The Marquis refuses, replying that he already has Dulce Olivia's permission to ask for her hand in marriage.