Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/56

 brought misfortune on me, and I should have paid dearly for my disregard of the sumptuary law, if I had not been allowed to start for Cassel, where I was joined by my battalion, which was then arrayed like the other regiments: these officers became plain soldiers, and it was in that capacity that I was directed to enter the 28th battalion of volunteers, which formed part of the army destined to drive the Austrians from Valenciennes and Condé.

The battalion was quartered at Fresnes. In the farm house in which I was billeted, there arrived one day the whole family of a pilot, consisting of the husband, wife, and two children, one of whom was a girl of eighteen, who was remarkably handsome. The Austrians had taken the boat, laden with grain, which was their whole fortune; and these poor people, reduced to the garments which covered them, had no resource left but to take refuge with my host, their relation. This circumstance, their pitiable condition, and the beauty of the young girl Delphine, touched my heart.

During a foraging party, I discovered the boat, which the enemy were only gradually unlading and measuring out. I proposed to a dozen of my comrades to carry off the spoils from the Austrians. They acceeded to the proposition; our colonel gave his consent; and on a stormy night, we approached the vessel without being observed by the officer in charge, whom we despatched to feed the fish of the Escaut with five strokes of the bayonet. The wife of the pilot, who would follow us, instantly ran for a bag of florins which she had concealed in the grain, and gave them to my charge. We then loosened the boat, to let it float to a point where we had an entrenched post, but at the moment it got into the stream, we were surprised by the challenge of a guard, whom we had not observed amongst the bulrushes which concealed him. At the report of his gun which accompanied his second call to us, the next piquet flew to arms, and in a moment the bank was covered with soldiers, who fired a