Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/57

 others, comprises a complete justification, and I here subjoin it word for word.

"Second Division, First Office, No. 70,466."

"This day, the 13th of October, 1823, at ten o'clock in the morning, we, Guillaume Recodere, mayor of the commune of Gentilly, after the order of M. the councillor of state, préfet of police, we went to the central house of detention of Bicêtre, when we caused to appear before us, in the room of the said prison, André Peyois, detained, under a sentence condemning him to confinement in irons, whom, after having presented a letter addressed to the chief of the second division of the prefecture of police, beginning with these words, pardon the liberty,' and finishing with these, of which my mother has informed me,' the said letter, dated the tenth current, and signed Peyois, we asked to tell us if he knew it to be that which he had subscribed and signed, and if he avowed the whole contents.

"His reply was, that he perfectly knew this letter to be the same which he addressed to M. Parisot, chief of the second division of the prefecture of police, it was signed by him. The body of the letter was not written by him, as he could not write well enough for that, but that what it contained had been dictated by him to the writer, (named Lemaitre, a fellow-prisoner,) and as a proof of what he stated, he is ready to declare to us orally all the facts and circumstances contained in the same, without requiring to have his memory assisted by any hints from us, by reading its contents: he, consequently, declared, that after the affair which led to his condemnation and sentence to fetters, when he publicly stated that the Sieur Vidocq had given him the sum of three francs to buy the crow bar, by aid of which he committed the robbery which led to his condemnation,