Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/83

 "There is no collusion, my worthy commissary: he was going on one side of the way, I was coming on the other, just as he was passing close beside me, something slid from me, it was a pillow; I told him of it, and he stooped to pick it up, and just then the guard came up and nabbed us both: this is why I am now before you, and I wish I may die if it is not the actual truth. Ask him if it is not."

The story was not badly imagined, and I took care not to deny what Masson said, but follow in his track: at length the commissary appeared convinced. "Have you any papers?" he inquired. I showed a permission of residence, which was pronounced correct, and my dismissal was instantly ordered. An evident satisfaction pervaded the features of Masson, when he heard the words, allez-vous coucher, (go to bed,) addressed to me: it was the formula of my liberty, and he was so much rejoiced at it, that any person must have been blind not to perceive it.

The robber was still kept, and nothing remained but to lay hands on the female receiver before she had disposed of the property intrusted to her. An immediate search was made, and, surprised in the midst of most material evidence which condemned her, the death's head was carried off from her trade at the moment when she least expected it.

Masson was taken to the prefecture of police, and the next day, according to the custom of thieves, from time immemorial, when a brother labourer is grabbed, I sent him a twopenny brown loaf, a hock of bacon, and a franc. I was told that he felt obliged by the attention, but had not the slightest suspicion that he who sent him the tribute of the fraternity was the cause of his mishap. It was only at La Force that he learnt that Jean Louis and Vidocq were the same person, and then he devised a singular means of defence; he asserted that I was the author of the robbery with which he was charged, and that, wanting his aid to remove the property, I had gone to seek him: but this long story stated to the