Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/79

 them were such good-natured fellows, that I considered as almost miraculous the impunity which they had enjoyed up to the moment when they met me, and paid the reckoning of their crimes. It is incredible that any individuals created expressly to fall into any plot or snare, should have awaited my coming to the police to be caught. Before my time the police was either most clumsily arranged, or else I was singularly fortunate: under any circumstances it is, as they say, "give a man luck and fling him into the sea." The following recital is in point. One day, towards twilight, dressed like a workman of the dock-yards, I was seated on the parapet of the Quai de Gèvres, when I saw, coming towards me, an individual whom I knew to be one of the frequenters of the Petite Chaise and the Bon Puits, two cabarets of renown for robbers.

"Good evening, Jean Louis," said this person, accosting me.

"Good evening, my lad."

"What the devil are you doing there! You look as if you were funking?"

"What do you mean, my boy? When the belly grumbles the mouth mumbles."

"What, the cupboard empty, that is not right for you, who are one of the family."

"Very true, but 'tis so."

"Come along, then, let us have a quart at Niguenac's: I have twenty browns left, and we will see how far they will go."

He conducted me to a vintner's, and called for a bottle, and then, leaving me for an instant, returned with two pounds of potatoes. "Here," he said, putting them smoking hot upon the table, "here are some gudgeons caught with a spade in the fields of Sablons; they are not fried though."

"These are oranges, but we want some salt."

"Salt, my lad, that will not ruin us."

The salt was brought, and, although an hour before I had made an excellent dinner at Martin's, I fell on the