BIFFON (Le), an alias of Riganson.

BIGORNEAU, sentimental clerk of Fritot’s, the shawl merchant in the
Bourse quarter, Paris, time of Louis Philippe. [Gaudissart II.]

BIJOU (Olympe). (See Grenouville, Madame.)

BINET, inn-keeper in the Department of l’Orne in 1809.  He was concerned in a trial which created some stir, and cast a shadow over Mme. de la Chanterie, striking at her daughter, Mme. des Tours-Minieres.  Binet harbored some brigands known as “chauffeurs.”  He was brought to trial for it and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. [The Seamy Side of History.]

BIROTTEAU (Jacques), a gardener hard by Chinon.  He married the chambermaid of a lady on whose estate he trimmed vines.  Three boys were born to them:  Francois, Jean and Cesar.  He lost his wife on the birth of the last child (1779), and himself died shortly after. [Cesar Birotteau.]

BIROTTEAU (Abbe Francois), eldest son of Jacques Birotteau; born in 1766; vicar of the church of Saint-Gatien at Tours, and afterwards cure of Saint-Symphorien in the same city.  After the death of the Abbe de la Berge, in 1817, he became confessor of Mme. de Mortsauf, attending her last moments. [The Lily of the Valley.] His brother Cesar, the perfumer, wrote him after his—­Cesar’s—­business failure in 1819, asking aid.  Abbe Birotteau, in a touching letter, responded with the sum of one thousand francs which represented all his own little hoard and, in addition, a loan obtained from Mme. de Listomere. [Cesar Birotteau.] Accused of having inveigled Mme. de Listomere to leave him the income of fifteen hundred francs, which she bequeathed him on her death, Abbe Birotteau was placed under interdiction, in 1826, the victim of the terrible hatred of the Abbe Troubert. [The Vicar of Tours.]

BIROTTEAU (Jean), second son of Jacques Birotteau.  A captain in the army, killed in the historic battle of La Trebia which lasted three days, June 17-19, 1799. [Cesar Birotteau.]

BIROTTEAU (Cesar), third son of Jacques Birotteau, born in 1779; dealer in perfumes in Paris at number 397 rue Saint-Honore, near the Place Vendome, in the old shop once occupied by the grocer Descoings, who was executed with Andre Chenier in 1794.  After the eighteenth Brumaire, Cesar Birotteau succeeded Sieur Ragon, and moved the source of the “Queen of Roses” to the above address.  Among his customers were the Georges, the La Billardieres, the Montaurans, the Bauvans, the Longuys, the Mandas, the Berniers, the Guenics, and the Fontaines.  These relations with the militant Royalists implicated him in the plot of the 13th Vendemaire, 1795, against the Convention; and he was wounded, as he told over and over, “by Bonaparte on the borders of Saint-Roche.”  In May, 1800, Birotteau the perfumer married Constance-Barbe-Josephine Pillerault.  By her he had an only daughter, Cesarine, who married Anselme Popinot in 1822.  Successively