Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/210

 me (I had then just escaped from the Bagne) I secretly took a place by the diligence and absconded.

How little did I then think that, after a lapse of twenty years, I should meet again in the police office, my little Humpina of the Rue Saint Martin: the proverb would have it so: two mountains never meet.

upwards of four months, a great number of murders and highway robberies had been committed on all the roads conducting to the capital, without it having been possible to discover the perpetrators of these crimes. In vain had the police kept a strict watch upon the actions of all suspected persons—their utmost diligence was fruitless; when a fresh attempt, attended with circumstances of the most horrible nature, supplied them with hints from which they could at length anticipate bringing the culprits to justice. A man named Fontaine, a butcher living at La Courtille, was going to a fair in the district of Corbeil, carrying with him his leather bag, in which was safely deposited the sum of 1,500 francs; he had passed the Cour de France and was walking on in the direction of Essonne, when, at a trifling distance from an auberge where he had