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Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honoré de Balzac
page 47 of 407 (11%)
1793 a poor girl of Tillet, a village near Andelys, came by night and
gave birth to a child in the garden of the curate of the church at
Tillet, and after rapping on the window-shutters went away and drowned
herself. The good priest took the child, gave him the name of the
saint inscribed on the calendar for that day, and fed and brought him
up as his own son. The curate died in 1804, without leaving enough
property to carry on the education he had begun. Ferdinand, thrown
upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose chances might bring him to
the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army, commerce, or domestic
life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first a commercial
traveller, then a perfumer's clerk in Paris, where he turned up after
traversing all France, having studied the world and made up his mind
to succeed at any price.

In 1813 Ferdinand thought it necessary to register his age, and obtain
a civil standing by applying to the courts at Andelys for a judgment,
which should enable his baptismal record to be transferred from the
registry of the parish to that of the mayor's office; and he obtained
permission to rectify the document by inserting the name of du Tillet,
under which he was known, and which legally belonged to him through
the fact of his exposure and abandonment in that township. Without
father, mother, or other guardian than the _procureur imperial_, alone
in the world and owing no duty to any man, he found society a hard
stepmother, and he handled it, in his turn, without gloves,--as the
Turks the Moors; he knew no guide but his own interests, and any means
to fortune he considered good. This young Norman, gifted with
dangerous abilities, coupled his desires for success with the harsh
defects which, justly or unjustly, are attributed to the natives of
his province. A wheedling manner cloaked a quibbling mind, for he was
in truth a hard judicial wrangler. But if he boldly contested the
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