Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/193

 memorable boxing matches of which the inhabitants of a fat cattle market ever preserved a remembrance.

My conquest was the more glorious, as I had testified much forbearance, and had only consented to fight when it would have been impossible to avoid it. My master, more and more satisfied with me, wished absolutely to engage me for a year, as foreman, promising me a small share of the profits. I had received no news of my mother; and here I found resources which I was about to seek at Paris; and, besides, my new dress disguised me so much that I felt no fear of detection in my frequent excursions to Paris. I passed, in feet, many persons of my acquaintance, who paid no attention to me. But one evening as I was passing along the Rue Dauphine, to get to the Barrière d’Enfer, some one tapped me on the shoulder. My first thought was to run for it, without turning round, being aware that, whoever thus stops you, relies on your looking back to seize you; but a stoppage of carriages choked up the passage. I therefore waited the result, and in a twinkling discovered that it was a false alarm.

The person who had so much alarmed me, was no other than Villedieu, the captain of the 13th chasseurs, with whom I had been intimately acquainted at Lille. Although surprised to see me with a hat covered with waxed cloth, a smock frock, and leathern gaiters, he testified much pleasure at the meeting, and invited me to supper, saying that he had some marvellous narratives to tell me. He was not in his uniform, but this did not astonish me, as the officers commonly wore common clothes when staying in Paris. What struck me most was his uneasy air and excessive paleness. As he expressed a wish to sup out of the barriers, we took a coach which conveyed us to Sceaux.

On reaching the Grand Cerf, we asked for a private room. We were scarcely served with what we asked for, when Villedieu, double-locking the door and