Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/187



Winter, when I apprehended him, had many associates in Paris, and the Tuileries was the notorious place where the most daring and celebrated thieves assembled, who recommended themselves to public veneration by impudently bedecking themselves with all the crosses of the orders of knighthood. In the eyes of an observer who can discern accurately, the Chateau was then less a royal residence than a haunt infested by these thieves. There congregated a crowd of galley-slaves, pickpockets, and swindlers of every class, who presented themselves as the old companions in arms of Charette, La Roche-Jaquelin, Stoflet, Cadoudal, &c. The days of review and court assemblies witnessed the gathering of these pretended heroes. In my office of superior agent of police, I judged it my duty to keep a strict look-out after these royalists of circumstances. I