Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/244

 myself about Fossard, that he was a capture I should reserve till the first of January, that I might have a suitable new year's gift for M. le préfet, as the previous year I had brought the famous Delzève.

"Go on your own way," replied M. Yvrier, irritated at this boast; "the event will show what you are, a presumptuous fellow, who creates difficulties to show his skill in surmounting them;" and he left me, grumbling out from between his teeth some other epithets and qualities which I nether understood nor heeded.

After this scene, I went to M. Henry's private room, to whom I related it. "Ah! they wince—they are angry, are they?" said he, laughing; "so much the better; it proves that they defer to your ability. I see," added M. Henry, "that these gentlemen are like the eunuchs of a seraglio; they cannot do themselves, and would not allow others to be doing." He then gave me the following particulars:—

"Fossard lives in Paris, in a street leading from the market-place to a boulevard that is somewhere between the Rue Comtesse d'Artois and the Rue Poissonnière, passing by the Rue Montorgueil and the Petit-Carreau: on what story his apartments are is unknown; but the windows may be recognised by having yellow silk curtains and other curtains of embroidered muslin. In the same house resides a little hump-backed woman, a seamstress, and intimate with the female who lives with Fossard."

These particulars were, it may be seen, not sufficiently definite to lead at once to the spot we wished to discover.

A hump-backed woman and yellow curtains with others of embroidered muslin, were not certainly to be found readily in the extent of ground which was to be explored. Perhaps such a combination might be found more than once in the limits prescribed. How many humps, old as well as young, are there not to be found in Paris? And who could count all the yellow curtains? In fact, the data were excessively