Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/226

 order for conducting Delzève to the depôt, saying, with much kindness: "Vidocq, go and take some repose; I am much satisfied with your conduct."

The apprehension of Delzève was productive of the highest testimonials of satisfaction to me, but at the same time it only augmented the hatred which the peace-officers and their agents cherished towards me; only one of them, M. Thibaut, rendered me the fullest justice.

Joining chorus with the thieves and malefactors, all the agents who were not successful as police-officers, assailed me with the utmost virulence. According to them, it was scandalous, abominable, to exercise my zeal in purging society of the evil-doers which troubled its repose. I had been a famous robber; there was no species of crime that I had not perpetrated: such were the reports which were widely spread, and generally accredited. Some perhaps believed them partly true; the thieves, at least, were persuaded that I had followed the vocation in which they worked; and in saying so they believed what they asserted. Before they were caught in my traps, it was necessary that they should think me one of themselves; and once taken, they considered me as a false comrade, but still not the less an "out-and-outer," (un grinche de la haute pégre) only that I plundered with impunity because I was necessary to the police: this was, at all events, the current tale in the prisons. The peace-officers and their satellites were not slow in giving all confirmation to such reports; and then perhaps, in becoming the echoes of the wretches who had cause to complain of me, they did not think that they lied so much as they really did; for, taking no pains to learn what had been the course of my early life, they were to a certain point excusable in thinking that I must have been a thief, since, from time immemorial, all the secret agents had followed that reputable means of getting a livelihood. They knew that such was the commencement of the lives of Goupil, Compère,