I therefore ask permission to transcribe my birth certificate, to allay any further discussion upon the subject. _Extract from the Registers of the Town of Villers-Cotterets._ "On the fifth day of the month of Thermidor, year X of the French Republic. "Certificate of the birth of Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, born this day at half-past five in the morning, son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie, lieutenant-general, born at Jérémie, on the coast of the island of Saint-Domingo, dwelling at Villers-Cotterets; and of Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Labouret, born at the above-mentioned Villers-Cotterets, _his wife._ "The sex of the child is notified to be male. "First witness: Claude Labouret, maternal grandfather of the child. "Second witness: Jean-Michel Deviolaine, inspector of forests in the fourth communal arrondissement of the department of Aisne, twenty-sixth jurisdiction, dwelling at the above mentioned Villers-Cotterets. This statement has been made to us by the father of the child, and is signed by "Al. Dumas, Labouret, and Deviolaine. "Proved according to the law by me Nicolas Brice-Mussart, mayor of the town of Villers-Cotterets, in his capacity as official of the Civil State, _Signed_: MUSSART." I have italicised the words _his wife_, because those who contested my right to the name of _Davy de la Pailleterie_ sought to prove that I was illegitimate. Now, had I been illegitimate I should quietly have accepted the bar as more celebrated bastards than I have done, and, like them, I should have laboured arduously with mind or body until I had succeeded in giving a personal value to my name. But what is to be done, gentlemen? I am not illegitimate, and it is high time the public followed my lead--and resigned itself to my legitimacy. They next fell back upon my father. In a club at Corbeil--it was in 1848--there lived an extremely well-dressed gentleman, forsooth, whom I was informed belonged to the magistracy; a fact which I should never have believed had I not been assured of it by trustworthy people; well, this gentleman had read, in I know not what biography, that it was not I but my father who was a bastard, and he told me the reason why I never signed myself by my name of Davy de la Pailleterie was because my father was never really called by that name, since he was not the son of the marquis de la Pailleterie. I began by calling this gentleman by the name usually applied to people who tell you such things; but, as he seemed quite as insensible to it as though it had been his family name, I wrote to Villers-Cotterets for a second birth certificate referring to my father, similar to the one they had already sent me about myself.