Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/17

, were no longer to be tolerated. I should have been very desirous, under such circumstances, to have enrolled myself in a band of robbers, only, the infamy of such a procedure apart, I should have been kept from it by the certainty of being speedily brought to the scaffold. But another thought animated me; I wished to avoid, at any cost, the opportunities and means of committing crimes: I wished to be free. I knew not how this wish was to be realised, or did it matter: my determination was made, and I had, as they say, marked a cross on the prison. In haste to get at a considerable distance, I took the road to Lyons, avoiding the high roads, until I reached the environs of Orange; there I fell in with some Provençal waggoners, whose packages soon revealed to me that they were about to take the same road as myself. I entered into conversation with them; and as they appeared to me to be hearty jovial fellows, I did not hesitate to tell them that I was a deserter, and that they would serve me materially if, to aid me in avoiding the vigilance of the gendarmes, they would agree to bestow their patronage on me. This proposal did not surprise them, and it even seemed as if they had suspected that I should claim their protection and secresy. At this period, and particularly in the south, it was not rare to meet with fine fellows, who had left their colours and committed themselves to the care of heaven. It was then very natural to take my word, and the waggoners received me kindly; and some money which I displayed, as if by chance, completed the interest which I had already excited. It was agreed that I should pass for the son of the person who had these conveyances in charge. I was accordingly clothed with a smock-frock, and was supposed to be making my first journey. I was decorated with ribands and nosegays, emblems which at each public-house, procured for me the congratulation of all the inmates.

A new 'John of Paris,' I filled my part very well; but the donations necessary to support it adequately