Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/174



A time after the difficult affair which proved so fatal to the cooper, I was employed to detect the authors of a nocturnal robbery, committed by climbing and forcible entry in the apartments of the Prince de Condé, in the Palais Bourbon. Glasses of a vast size had disappeared, and their abstraction was effected with so much precaution, that the sleep of two Cerberi, who supplied the place of a watchman, had not been for a moment disturbed. The frames in which these glasses had been were not at all injured; and I was at first tempted to believe that they had been taken out by looking-glass makers or cabinet makers; but in Paris these workmen are so numerous, that I could not pitch on any one of them whom I knew with any certainty of suspicion. Yet I was resolved to detect the guilty, and to effect this I commenced my inquiries.

The keeper of a sculpture-gallery, near the quincaux of the invalids, gave me the first information by which