Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/18

 made such inroads on my purse, that, on reaching the guillotiere, where I was to leave my party, I had only twenty-eight sous left. With resources so ineffecient, I had no thoughts of fixing my abode at the hotels of the Place des Terreaux. Having wandered about for some time in the dirty and dark streets of the second city in France, I remarked, in the Rue des Quatre-Chapeaux, a sort of tavern where I thought that I might procure a supper commensurate with my finances. I was not mistaken; the supper was light enough, and soon dispatched. To remain hungry is indeed a disagreeable thing; and not to know where to find shelter for one's head is equally annoying. When I had wiped my knife, which, however, had not been much engaged, I was reflecting, that I must pass the night under the canopy of heaven, when, at a table near to mine, I heard a conversation in that bastard German so much spoken in some districts of the Netherlands, and with which I was well acquainted. The speakers were a man and woman about to retire, and whom I found to be Jews. Informed that at Lyons, as in many other towns, these people kept furnished houses, in which they received smugglers, I asked if they could direct me to a public house. I could not have addressed myself to better persons; for they were lodging-keepers, and offered to become my hosts, which, on agreeing to, I accompanied them to the Rue Thomassin. Six beds were in the room in which I was placed, none of which were occupied, although it was ten o'clock, and I fell asleep under the idea that I should have no companions in my room.

On awaking, I heard the following conversation in a slang language which was familiar to me.

"It is half past six," said a voice, which was not unknown to me, "and you lie snoring still."

"Well, and what then? We wanted to break open the old goldsmith's shop to night, but he was on his guard, and we ought to have given him a few inches of cold steel, and then the blood would have flowed."