Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/73

, the forger; and this idea determined me to tell her all. Away from those who had drawn me into this imposture, and who had just been arrested at Namur, I decided on the measures I would adopt; and one evening, after supper, I determined on breaking the ice. Without detailing my adventures, I told the baroness, that circumstances which I could not explain compelled me to appear at Brussels under the two names by which she knew me, but that neither was the real one. I added, that events forced me to quit the Netherlands without the power of contracting an union which would have ensured my happiness, but that I should for ever preserve the recollection of the kindness which she had so generously evinced for me.

I spoke long, and with an emotion which increased my utterance and warmth of manner—and I am now astonished at the facility of my own eloquence when I think of it—but I feared to hear the reply of the baroness. Motionless, pale, and with a glazed eye, she heard me without interruption; then looking at me with a glance of horror, she rose abruptly and ran to shut herself up in her room. I never saw her again. Enlightened by my confession, and by some words which without doubt fell from me in the embarrassment of the moment, she saw all the dangers from which she had escaped, and unjustly suspected me perhaps of being even more culpable than I was; she might think that she had escaped from some vile criminal, whose hands might have been embrued in blood! On the other hand, if this complication of disguises might render her more apprehensive, the spontaneous avowal that I had made was sufficient to have quelled her fears; and this idea probably took hold of her, for the next day when I arose, the landlord gave me a casket, containing fifteen thousand francs in gold, which the baroness had left for me before her departure, at one o'clock in the morning, which I was glad to hear of, as her presence would have troubled me. Nothing now detaining me at