Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/128

 eight years' imprisonment. This was the termination of the sentence, which I subjoin accurately, in reply to the tales which malevolence and stupidity have circulated. Some say that I was sentenced to death for numerous murders; others state that I had long been chief of a band which robbed the diligences; the most moderate state that I was condemned to perpetual labour at the gallies for robbery and housebreaking; and it has been asserted that I (at a later period) incited wretches to crime that I might show my vigilance in pouncing upon them; as if there were not a sufficient number of the really guilty. Certainly false comrades, as are everywhere found, even amongst robbers, sometimes instructed me in the plans of their accomplices: certainly to confirm the intent whilst we prevented the crime, it was sometimes necessary to allow of a partial commission of the deed, for experienced rogues are never caught but in the very act: and I ask, is there anything in this which has the appearance of an inducement to do ill. This imputation emanated from the police, amongst whom I have some enemies; but the imputation fails before the publicity of judicial facts, which would not have failed in revealing the infamies with which I am charged; and it also fails before the operations of the brigade of safety, which I directed. It is not when proof is given that we have recourse to deception, and the confidence of the clever men who have preceded M. Delavau, in the office of chief magistrate, will acquit me of such wretched expedients. "He is a lucky fellow," said, one day, the police officers who had failed in an enterprise in which I succeeded, to M. Angles. "Well," said he, turning his back on them, "Do you be lucky fellows too."

Parricide is the only crime of which I have not been charged, and yet I declare that I never was sentenced to, nor underwent, but the sentence which I here subjoin. My pardon will prove this; and when I assert that I never aided in this miserable forgery, I should be believed, for it was at last but a prison joke, which, if