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 rights of others, he certainly
yielded none of his own; he attacked his adversary at the right moment,
and wearied him out with his inflexible persistency. His merits were
those of the Scapins of ancient comedy; he had their fertility of
resource, their cleverness in skirting evil, their itching to lay hold
of all that was good to keep. In short, he applied to his own poverty a
saying which the Abbe Terray uttered in the name of the State,--he
kept a loophole to become in after years an honest man. Gifted with
passionate energy, with a boldness that was almost military in requiring
good as well as evil actions from those about him, and