Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/131

 the ninth and twenty-fourth Prairial following, by the justice of the peace for the south, of the commune of Douai (which indictment is hereunto annexed.)

"That the said Sebastian Boitel, a prisoner in the house of confinement, called St Peter's Tower, at Lille, had been set at liberty by virtue of a forged order from the committee of legislation, and the tribunal of Cassation, dated at Paris, the twentieth Brumaire, in the fourth year of the republic, signed Camot, Lesage-Cenault, and Le Coindre, at the back of which was the seal of the representative of the people Talot, addressed to the said Brice Coquelle; that this order and seal, which the latter used for his own purpose, were not those of the committee of legislation and the said representative Talot; and thence it is proved that this order and seal are a forgery of a public and authentic document, and that the forgery was evident on the slightest inspection, inasmuch as it was intituled 'Order of the Committee of Legislation, Tribunal of Cassation;' a ridiculous title, confounding, in one and the same authority, two distinct authorities.

"That the ninth Prairial last, there was found in one of the dungeons of the house of confinement at Douai, a brass seal without a top, hid at the foot of a bed; that the said Vidocq had slept there previously; that the seal is the same as that which was found attached to the forged order, and presents a precisely similar impression; that, after the visit of the said judge of the south of Douai, made on the day before, from the dungeon in which the said Vidocq then was, they heard, on turning over the straw bed, something fell, sounding like brass or silver; that Vidocq threw himself on it, and managed to withdraw what had fallen, and to substitute in its place a piece of a file which he produced; that he had been seen previously with the seal by the said Herbaux and Stofflet, to whom he had confessed having been lieutenant of the battalion of which the seal bore the name.

"That the said Herbaux, François Vidocq,