Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/118

 to obtain anything from the inspectors, made his moan in the following broken and interrupted soliloquy, which, heard through the door, excited mirth, by his alternatives of grotesque resignation and impatience.

"Oh! I say, though, it is coming it a little too strong to keep me here all night!—impossible—they are coming—no; no more an inspector than I am a king—what the deuce keeps the brutes?—If I were behind them I would apply a quickener—if it is not their fault, to be sure, nothing can be said.—They certainly planted me for the purpose—yet, why don't they bring in the cove—perhaps he has done them.—If he be not caught in the fact they can do nothing with him.—There is no fun in all this, though, to me, who have not tasted food since I arose.—Come, gentlemen, as soon as you please, at your earliest convenience—I am quite ready—but we can't always have our own way.—What a devil of an unlucky go for me!—It plays the deuce with my stomach; I want to eat, and have nothing.—How my belly cries cupboard.—This is a nice new year's present, I must confess.—Do they want to try my appetite?—A very excellent method, certainly—fasting is good for young people.—Never mind, never mind, it will not kill me the time, and I shall breakfast all the better in the morning.—I will wager they are guzzling away at some cabaret, the brutes!—If I were near them—this is a good joke, certainly, an admirable farce.—In the name of all the devils in h, and the saints in the calendar!—Well, why put yourself out, my boy?—Hunger makes the wolf leave the woods—get out, get out yourself, boy, it is easy enough—if I had but my turkey of this morning—if my friend Jules were here—he does not know, ah! if he knew."

Hotot said, as the people say, "if the king knew;" but whilst he was deploring my ignorance, and so very far from foreseeing the consequences of an arrest, which he supposed pretended, I, exploring the little streets in the neighbourhood of the place du Châtelet, had joined Emilie Simonet, in one of those low haunts where, to