Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/18

 The theft effected, M. the lieutenant-general was instantly informed of it, and when the stranger presented himself to give his statement of it, he was struck with amazement, for scarcely had he described the missing valuable when it was instantly restored to him.

M. de Sartines, of whom so much has been spoken and so much is still spoken, wrong or right, took no other pains to prove that the police of France was the best in the world. As well as his predecessors, he had a singular predilection for thieves, and all those whose talents had once met with his approbation were sure of being allowed to go on with impunity. He sometimes flung out defiances to them; he commanded them into his presence, and thus addressed them: "Gentlemen, the honour and reputation of the thieves is at stake, it is said that you cannot effect a certain robbery,—the proprietor is on his guard, therefore form your plans, ana remember that I have pledged myself to your success."

In these times of happy memory, M. the lieutenant-general of police assumed no less vanity from the skill of his thieves than did the late abbé Sicard of the intelligence of his dumb pupils; great lords, ambassadors, princes, the king himself, were present at their exercises. Now-a-days we bet upon the fleetness of a horse, then people betted on the adroitness of a cutpurse; and if persons wished to amuse themselves in society, they borrowed a thief from the police in the same way as they now have the services of a gendarme. M. de Sartines always had at his elbow some score of the most skilful, whom he kept for the private pleasures of the court; they were generally marquisses, counts, knights, or at least people who had all the fine airs of the courtiers, with whom it was so much more easy to confound them, as at play a similar inclination to cheat established a certain parity between them.

Good company, whose manners and habits did not essentially differ from those of these thieves, could,