Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/48



attaining the post of chief of the police of safety, I no longer cared for the snares with which they so often sought to encompass me. The time of trial was past; but still I was compelled to keep on my guard against the base jealousies of some of my subalterns, who envied my appointment, and did their utmost to endeavour to supplant me. Coco-Lacour was a leader amongst the malcontents, who endeavoured to caress and injure me at the same time. At the moment when this rogue was at fifty paces from me and would have overturned all the chairs in a church to come and salute me with a honeyed "God bless you," when, by chance he heard me sneeze, I was well assured that he was a snake in the grass. No one despises more than myself those petty attentions of a man who is servile, even when civility is scarcely requisite. But as I had a conscience which told me that I had done my duty, I cared very little as to whether these demonstrations were false or true. Scarcely a day passed without my spies informing me that Lacour was the soul of certain meetings, (conciliabules,) where all matters relating to me were discussed. They said that he projected my downfall; that there was a party formed against me, the aim of whose conspiracy was to destroy the tyrant Vidocq. At first, the conspirators contented themselves with clamours; and as they hid my destruction perpetually in perspective, that they might mutually please each other, they universally predicted it, and each of