Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/159

 Sophie and I stood thunderstruck at hearing piercing cries issue from the basket; I lifted up the linen that covered it, and saw—a child of two or three months old, whose roaring would have split the tympanum of a dead man.

"Well!" said I to Sophie, "the brat is yours, I suppose. Tell me, is it a girl, or a boy?"

"Well, I am caught again. I shall remember this, and if ever I am asked why, I shall answer, oh nothing, a childish affair. Another time when I steal linen I will first look at it."

"And this umbrella, whose is it?"

"Oh! my God, yes—. As you see; I had, however, wherewithal to shelter myself; but when chance is against you it is in vain to attempt it."

I conducted Sophie to M. de Fresne's, commissary of police, whose office was in the neighbourhood. The umbrella was kept as a convicting evidence. As to the child, whom she had unwittingly carried off, it was instantly returned to its mother. The thief had a sentence of five years' imprisonment. It was, I believe, the fifth or sixth sentence she had undergone; she is still in the hands of justice, and I should not be surprised if she remains at Lazare for life. Sophie thought the trade she carried on a very natural one, and its repression, when unavoidable, she looked upon as an accident. Prison had no horrors for her, far from it; she was, in a manner, in her sphere. Sophie had contracted those inclinations, more than strange, which are not justified by the example of Sappho of old, and under lock and key the opportunities of abandoning herself to these shameful depravities were more frequent; it was not without a motive, as we see, that she had so little liberty. If she were apprehended, it caused her but trifling pain, as she consoled herself by perspective pleasures. This woman was a strange character, as we may judge. A woman named Gillion, with whom she lived in culpable intimacy, was taken whilst committing a theft. Sophie, who aided her, es-