Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/224

 by asking their masters to bring them to help to wait at table, or by engaging the attention of the waiting-maids and cooks by lovers who were in the plot. The porters saw nothing, because they seldom took anything but jewels or money. If by chance any large parcel was to be removed, they folded it up in dirty linen, and it was thrown out of window to an accomplice in waiting with a washerwoman's wheel-barrow.

A multitude of robberies committed by Jossas are well known, all of which bespeak that acute observation to invention which he possessed in the highest degree. In society, where he passed as a Creole of Havannah, he often met inhabitants of that place, without ever letting anything escape him which could betray him. He frequently led on families of distinction to offer him the hand of their daughters. Taking care always, during the many conversations thereon, to learn where the dowry was deposited, he invariably carried it off, and absconded at the moment appointed for signing the contract. But of all his tricks, that played off on a banker at Lyons it perhaps the most astonishing. Having acquainted himself with the ways of the house, under pretext of arranging accounts and negociations, in a short time an intimacy arose, which gave him the opportunity of getting the impression of all the locks except that of the cash chest, of which a secret ward rendered all his attempts unavailing. On the other hand, the chest being built is the wall, and cased with iron, it was impossible to think of breaking it open. The cashier, too, never parted from his key; but these obstacles did not daunt Jossas. Having formed a close intimacy with the cashier, he proposed an excursion of pleasure to Collonges; and on the day oppointed, they went in a cabriolet. On approaching Saint Rambert, they saw by the river side a woman apparently dying, and the blood spouting from her mouth and nostrils; beside her was a man, who appeared much distressed, assisting her. Jossas, testifying considerable emotion, told him that the best