Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/77

 and that there was danger in remaining longer at Boulogne, they resolved to leave us. The next day we started them off, and the parting did not cost us much pain. Dufailli had put them well in cash, and we hoped for future meetings, &c. In fact, we did meet again at a later period, in a certain house kept by a namesake of the celebrated Jean-Bart, a female descendant of whom, in the bosom of his very country, consecrated herself to the pleasures of the rivals of her great ancestor.

Mother Thomas recovered her liberty after six months' confinement; Pauline and her sister then returning to the maternal bosom, though torn from their native soil, renewed the courses of their former lives. I know not whether they made a fortune; it is not impossible. But for want of accurate information, I here end their history, and resume my own.

Paulet and his crew had scarcely noticed our absence, before we rejoined them; we sang, drank, and eat alternately without stirring, until midnight; thus confounding all repasts in one lengthened meal. Paulet, and Fleuriot his second in command, were the heroes of the feast; physically, as well as morally, they were the perfect antipodes of each other. The former was a stout short man, strong backed, square set, with a neck like a bull; wide shoulders, a full face, and his features like that of a lion, his aspect either fierce or gentle; in fight he was pitiless, elsewhere he was humane and compassionate. At the moment of boarding he was a perfect demon; in the bosom of his family, and with his wife and children, except a little roughness of manner, he was as mild as a dove; then he was the jolly, simple, bluff, and rough farmer; a perfect patriarch, whom it was impossible to discern in the pirate. Once on shipboard, his manners and language entirely changed, and he became harsh and coarse to excess; his will was as despotic as that of an oriental pasha; abrupt and rude, he had an iron arm and will, and woe to him who opposed either. Paulet was a