Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/159

 given him was but a rash adventure, and it must be confessed that I had but a small chance of advantage in personating such a character. This was not all; considering that this state of suspicion, which, in the opinion of the judge and of the public is always inseparable from the condition of a fugitive galley-slave, was it not likely that if Bouhin were apprehended as a coiner, I should be considered as his accomplice? Justice has committed many errors! Condemned once, though innocent, who would answer that I should not a second time be similarly sentenced? The crime which had been wrongfully imputed to me, inasmuch as it pronounced me a forger, was nominally the same species of crime as that which Bouhin had committed. I saw myself sinking beneath a weight of presumptive evidence and appearances, such as, perhaps, my counsel, ashamed of undertaking my defence, would conceive necessary to impel him to throw me on the pity of my judges. I heard my death-sentence pronounced. My fears redoubled when I learnt that Bouhin had an associate, a doctor, named Terrier, who frequently came to his house. This man had a most hanging look, and it seemed to me that on only looking at him, all the police-officers in the world would have suspected and watched him. Without knowing him, I should have thought that in following him it would be impossible not to attain the knowledge of some perpetrated or intended crime. In a word, he was a bird of ill omen to every place he entered; and persuaded that his visits would bring mischief to the house, I persuaded Bouhin to give up a business so hazardous as that he followed; but the most cogent reasons prevailed not with him; all I could obtain by dint of intreaty was, that to avoid giving rise to a search which would certainly betray me to the police, he would suspend the making and the passing of money as long as I should remain with him; but this promise did not prevent my discovering him two days