Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/165

 be made; and M. Senard and the curé, thereupon, went to Pontoise, and the declaration being consequently made, and the robbery stated, Moiselet was taken up and interrogated. They tried every means to make him confess his guilt; but he persisted in avowing himself innocent, and, for lack of proof to the contrary, the charge was about to be dropped altogether, when, to preserve it for a time, I set an agent of mine to work. He, clothed in a military uniform, with his left arm in a sling, went with a billet to the house where Moiselet's wife lived. He was supposed to have just left the hospital, and was only to stay at Livry for forty-eight hours; but a few moments after his arrival, he had a fall, and a pretended sprain suddenly occurred, which put it out of his power to continue his route. It was then indispensable for him to delay, and the mayor decided that he should remain with the cooper's wife until further orders.

Madame Moiselet was one of those good, jolly, fat personages, who have no objection to living under the same roof with a wounded conscript, and bore all the joking about the accident which delayed the young soldier at her house; besides, he could console her in her husband's absence, and, as she was not thirty-six years of age, she was still at that time of life when a woman does not despise consolation. This was not all—evil tongues reproached Madame Moiselet with not liking wine—after it had been drank; that was her local reputation! The pretended soldier did not fail to caress all the weak points by which she was accessible: at first he made himself useful, and then, to complete the conciliation of the good graces of his hostess, from time to time he loosened the strings of his tolerably well-filled purse to pay for his bottle of wine.

The cooper's wife was charmed with so many little attentions. The soldier could write, and became her secretary; but the letters which she addressed to her dear husband were of a nature not to compromise her—not the least expression that can have a twofold con-