Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/156

 morning, and we met nobody. I carried the knives and forks, which I took good care not to trust to my companion, as I wanted to get off without inconvenience in case he should turn upon me or create a disturbance. Fortunately he was very quiet, for I had the terrible knife, and Chevalier, who never reasoned, felt persuaded that at the least motion he should make, I would stab him to the heart; and this salutary dread, which he felt the more deeply as it was not undeserved, kept him in check.

We walked for some time in the environs, and Chevalier, who did not foresee how this was to end, walked mechanically beside me, like one bewildered and idiotic. At eight o'clock I made him get into a coach and conducted him to the passage of the wood of Boulogne, where he pledged, in my presence, and under his own name, the four knives and forks, on which they lent him a hundred francs. I took the sum, and, satisfied with having so conveniently recovered in a lump what he had exorted from me in detail, I got into the coach with him once more, which I stopped at the Place de la Concorde. There I alighted, after having given him this piece of advice—"Mind and be more circumspect than ever; if I am arrested, whoever is the cause, look to yourself." I desired the coachman to drive on to Rue de l'Échiquier, No. 23; and to be sure that he took no other direction, I remained for a short time on the watch; and then jumping into a cabriolet, I went to a clothesman of the Croix-Rouge, who gave me the clothes of a workman in exchange for my own. In this new costume I walked towards the Esplanade des Invalides, to learn if it were possible to purchase a uniform of this etablishment [sic]. A wooden-legged man, whom I questioned, directed me to Rue St Dominique, where, at a broker's, I should find a complete outfit. This broker was, it appeared, a chattering fellow. "I am not inquisitive," said he—(that is the preamble to all impertinent enquiries)—"You have all your limbs; I presume the uniform is