Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/189

 had associated with robbers, and lived by my wits, I felt an invincible repugnance to entering on a career of crimes, of which early experience had taught me the perils and risks. A refusal would, on the other hand, render me suspected by my new companions, who, in this retreat, secure from sight or hearing, could knock me on the head with impunity, and send me to keep company with the salmons and smelts of the Loire; and I had only one course to take, which was to set out as quickly as possible, and this I resolved on doing.

Having exchanged my new clothes for a countryman's frock and eighteen francs to boot, I left Nantes, carrying at the end of a stick a basket of provisions, which gave me at once the appearance of an inhabitant of the environs. It is useless to observe, that I struck into the cross roads, where, by the bye, the gendarmes would be better stationed than on the high road, where persons who have any motives for avoiding justice rarely show themselves. This observation is applicable besides to the system of municipal police, whence, as I think, immense advantages could be drawn. Confined only to security, properly so called, it would then follow from one place to another the traces of malefactors who, now once striking out from the radius of large towns, defy all researches. At different periods, and always at seasons of great calamities, when the Chauffeurs were infesting the north; when famine desolated the districts of Calvados and Eure; when the Oise saw conflagrations nightly blazing; partial applications of this system were made, and the results proved the efficacy of the arrangement.