Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/125

 at you for a Félicité! between ourselves that Félicité is a ; if I had to make a choice, I give you my word that I would give you the preference."

"Come, Jules, you are buttering me down. You are trying it on! I know well enough that Félicité is the better looking; but if I am not so swell, I have my heart in the right place. You saw it when I used to take the scran to Lorcefé; (La Force;) that is the time to judge if one is true or not.

"That is true, you took every care of him, I was witness to that."

"Now, Jules, have I not done all a woman could do for him? The blackguard, one can scarcely keep one's temper! I did it to the injury of my trade. I am sure that no one could say a word against me; a married wife and all could not have done more."

"What is it you say? she would not have done so much."

"To be sure not, but it is not only that, he knows how disposed I am to have children—whilst he had been fifteen months in quod did I have a young one without him? Is not that virtue? and now he would deprive me altogether. My shoe knows what I have undergone, and would tell long tales if it could speak; did it not have those ten sous pieces which passed under the very nose of Bariole? He ought to remember them; but cut off the rope from a rogue's neck and ."

"You are right! It was not Félicité, then, who gave them to him?"

"Félicité! she would sooner have eaten him. But it is always those that they love best," (she sighed and drank, sighed and drank, sighed, and drank again.) "Since we two are together, tell me have you seen them together lately? tell me the truth, and on the word of Emilie Simonet, which is my real name, may every drop which has entered, and shall enter my lips turn to poison, may I die on the spot, or may I be nabbed