Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/85

 knew but very little of them. He complied, and told me as follows:

"It was in the prison (Rasphuys) of Ghent, where I passed six months, some years since, at the end of a game at which some doctors (loaded dice) were discovered, that I made acquaintance with two men of the troop now at Malines. We were in the same cell, and as I passed myself off for an accomplished thief, they told me, without distrust, all their light-fingered tricks: and even gave me the minutest details of their singular existence. These people come from the country about Moldavia, where a hundred and fifty thousand of them vegetate, like the Jews in Poland, without the power of fulfilling any office but that of executioner. Their name changes with their change of country; they are ziguiners in Germany, gypsies in England, zingari in Italy, gitanos in Spain, and Bohemiens in France and Belgium. They thus traverse all Europe, exercising the lowest and most dangerous trades. They clip dogs, tell fortunes, mend crockery, repair saucepans, play wretched music at the public-house doors, speculate in rabbit-skins, and change foreign money which they find out of the usual circulation.

"They sell specifics against the illness of cattle, and to promote the business, they dispatch trusty envoys, who, under pretences of making purchases, get into the stables, and throw drugs into the mangers, which make the cattle sick. They then present themselves, and are received with open arms, and knowing the nature of the malady, they easily remove it, and the farmer hardly knows how to be adequately grateful. This is not all; for before they quit the farm, they learn whether the husbandman has any crowns of such and such a year, or such and such a stamp, promising to give a premium for them. The interested countryman, like all persons who but seldom find an opportunity of getting money, spreads his coin before