Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/77

 by interrogatories. I did not require to be much questioned, but went beyond the communications which they desired to know: a stranger in Paris, I had only known Riboulet in prison at Valenciennes, when he was sent back to his regiment as a deserter; he was a college chum, (a fellow-prisoner,) whom I had met again. As to the rest, I took care to represent myself in colours which charmed them: I was a thorough out-and-outer (sacripan fini.) I know not what I had not done, and was ready to do any thing. I unbosomed myself that they might unbosom as freely in their turn; it is a tactic which has often been successful with me: the party soon chattered like magpies, and I became as well acquainted with all their doings as if I had never been separated from them. They told me their names, residences, exploits, misfortunes, hopes; they had met a man who was really worthy of their confidence: I returned it, I suited them, and all was said.

Such explanations always make a man thirsty, more or less: all the liquor-shops in our road were visited: more than a hundred toasts were drank in honour of our new convention, and we were not to separate again. "Come along with us, come," they said, and they were so pressing, that, quite unable to refuse their importunities, I agreed to go to their abode. Rue des Filles-Dieu, No. 14, where they lodged in a furnished house. Once in their abode, it was impossible to refuse a share of their bed: it is difficult to describe what good fellows they were; and so was I, and they were the better convinced of it, as, during an hour, whilst I pretended to be sleeping, my friend Riboulet passed an eulogy on me, in a low tone of voice, of which not even half was true, or I should have richly merited a sentence for ten times the term of my natural life. I was not born coiffeur, like a certain personage whom the witty Figaro ridicules, I was born coiffé, and had the happiness of killing a generation of honest men with vexation. At last