Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/24



born at Arras; my continual disguises, the flexibility of my features, and a singular power of grimacing, having cast some doubt concerning my age, it will not be deemed superfluous to declare here, that I was brought into the world on the 23d of July 1775, in a house adjoining that in which Robespierre was born sixteen years before. It was night; the rain fell in torrents; the thunder growled; a relation, who combined the functions of midwife and fortune-teller, predicted that my career would be a stormy one. There were even then in the world some good people who believed in prognostications; now that the world