cathedral of Tours, and had only once left that city to visit his
brother Cesar. The bustle of Paris so bewildered the good priest that
he was afraid to leave his room. He called the cabriolets
"half-coaches," and wondered at all he saw. After a week's stay he
went back to Tours resolving never to revisit the capital.

The second son of the vine-dresser, Jean Birotteau, was drafted into
the militia, and won the rank of captain early in the wars of the
Revolution. At the battle of Trebia, Macdonald called for volunteers
to carry a battery. Captain Jean Birotteau advanced with his company,
and was killed. The destiny of the Birotteaus demanded, no doubt, that
they should be oppressed by men, or by circumstances, wheresoever they
planted themselves.

The last child is the hero of this story. When Cesar at fourteen years
of age could read, write, and cipher, he left his native place and
came to Paris on foot to seek his fortune, with one louis in his
pocket. The recommendation of an apothecary at Tours got him a place
as shop-boy with Monsieur and Madame Ragon, perfumers. Cesar owned at
this period a pair of hob-nailed shoes, a pair of breeches, blue
stockings, a flowered waistcoat, a peasant's jacket, three coarse
shirts of good linen, and his travelling cudgel. If his hair was cut
like that of a choir-boy, he at least had the sturdy loins of a
Tourangian; if he yielded sometimes to the native idleness of his
birthplace, it was counterbalanced by his desire to make his fortune;
if he lacked cleverness and education, he possessed an instinctive
rectitude and delicate feelings, which he inherited from his mother,
--a being who had, in Tourangian phrase, a "heart of gold." Cesar
received from the Ragons his food, six francs a month as wages, and a
pallet to sleep upon in the garret near the cook. The clerks who