Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/247

 a long time previously. "Well, well!" said he, "how I like people to amuse themselves; it would be well if you all did the same; it would pass time away; and, with the profits, you might purchase some small comforts." A few days afterwards, the bench was a perfect workshop, where fourteen men, equally anxious to drive away ennui and to earn a little money, worked away with much industry. We had all some goods ready, which were sold by the assistance of the convicts who gave us the materials. For a month, our trade was very brisk, and every day we had abundant returns, not a sous of which was reserved. Father Mathieu had authorized us to appoint as our treasurer a convict named Pantaragat, who sold provisions in the room in which we were. Unfortunately there are goods which cannot be multiplied without the necessary balance between produce and consumption being destroyed. This is a fact in political economy, that there is a point when the production must terminate for lack of demand. Toulon was replete with toys of every description, and we must thenceforward sit with folded arms. No longer knowing what to do, I feigned a complaint in my legs, that I might be sent to the hospital. The doctor, to whom I was recommended by father Mathieu, whose protegéprotégé [sic] I had become, actually believed that I was unable to walk. When one would attempt to escape, it is impossible to manage better than to contrive to excite such an opinion. Doctor Ferrant did not for an instant suspect me of any intent to deceive him; he was one of those disciples of Esculapius, who, like many of the Hippocrates of the school of Montpellier, whence he came, think that bluntness is a part of their profession; but still he was a humane man, and behaved very kindly to me. The chief surgeon had also a liking for me, and to me he trusted the care of his surgery chest; I scraped his lint, rolled his bandages, and made myself generally useful, so that my willingness procured for me his kindness: every one, even to the argousin of the