succeed to the business, and employed him at an
early age to carry the bread to the customers'
houses; of which heavy charge, in consequence
of his unusually robust, constitution, he was
capable at an earlier age than other lads. Like
many celebrated robbers, François opened his
apprenticeship by stealing from the paternal
till. At first, he only abused the confidence
with which it was left open to his attacks;
when it was kept locked, he stormed it with
the help of a false key, which at last
compromised him. When there was no cash, he
laid hands upon the loaves and the household
chattels, and sold them for what he could
get, to whomsoever would buy. One day, he
pledged the family plate at the Mont-de-Pieté
for a hundred and fifty francs, by which he
earned the honour of his first detention at The
Baudets, or The Donkeys—the town prison,
where he had ten days of dungeon by way of a
fatherly correction. He left so well corrected
that he broke open his parent's cash-box, took
the whole of its contents, about two thousand
francs, and escaped to Ostend, with the
intention of embarking for America.

How he was plundered of his plunder, how he
joined a company of acrobats and dancing-dogs,
how he enlisted, fought, deserted, enlisted again
into another regiment, deserted again to the
Austrians, got flogged or caned, deserted back
again, and got wounded in the leg, were long to
tell though it was short to do. For, having
received his discharge, in consequence of fresh
wounds, he married, at the age of eighteen, a
lean and ugly woman much older than himself,
but who was the sister of one Chevalier, an aide-
de-camp of that monster of the Revolution,
Joseph Lebon. Having met with what he
deserved from this amiable female, after disgraceful
wanderings in Belgium he moved to Lille,
where he lived by acting as the accomplice of
swindlers. A violent assault committed on an
ofiicer procured him three months' imprisonment
in the Tour Saint-Pierre; but, as he did not
want for money, he secured therein a private
chamber called the Å’il-de-BÅ“uf, or the Bull's
Eye.

There were in this prison, at the same time
with himself, two ex-sergeant-majors of his
acquaintance, who were awaiting the departure of
a gang of galley-slaves, and a husbandman
condemned to six years of reclusion, who did
nothing but lament his fate, and continually repeat
that he would give this and that sum of money
to regain his liberty. As his position was really
pitiable (he had a wife and seven children, and
when the scarcity was at its worst had stolen a
few pecks of wheat to keep them from starving),
and as the offers which he made were not to oe
despised, the two sergeant-majors at first
undertook to draw up in his favour a petition for a
free pardon; but they afterwards thought it an
easier and a quicker plan to fabricate an order
for his discharge, which the gaoler, conniving at
the scheme, received as good and available, and
immediately put into execution. This document,
soon discovered to be false, was concocted in
Vidocq's chamber, if not with his collaboration.
He was found guilty of forgery and the employment
of forged papers purporting to be public
and authentic writings. Years afterwards, to
justify himself against an accusation that he
had been often condemned—once to death—he
took care to publish in his Memoirs the text of
the judgment pronounced against him, the 7th
Nivose, an V (27th of December, 1796), by the
criminal tribunal of the Département du Nord,
sitting at Douai, a judgment which condemns
him to eight years in irons, and six hours of
public exposure. It is a singular position
for a man to be in, to be obliged to make
use of such a document as a sort of certificate
of comparative respectability. Vidocq, it seems,
never underwent any other condemnation than
this.

This is the proper place to mention, once for
all, two extraordinary faculties which Vidocq
possessed: the first, was the power of adapting
his physiognomy to circumstances; the second,
of doing whatever he would with his stomach,
either in the way of abstinence or of absorption.
A first-rate actor will mould his features
to represent those of a youth, or of a man a
hundred years old; and this, no doubt, is a
wonderful feat; but, after all, it is performed
in a theatre, by lamp-light, and at a certain
distance from the nearest spectator; whereas it was
by broad daylight, in immediate contact with
former accomplices, with professional thieves, in
the presence of turnkeys, gendarmes, and
commissaries of police, that Vidocq assumed
whatever stature, gait, physiognomy, age, and accent,
best suited his purpose. He was tall, and of
athletic build; and yet, when he was more than
sixty years of age, his favourite disguise was to
dress himself in female attire! The peculiar
disposition of his stomach was still more remarkable.
We find him, in his moments of distress, going
without food two or three whole days; and
afterwards, when he kept one of the best tables in
Paris, quitting it to go and devour in a filthy
den, with every appearance of gluttonous appetite,
boiled potatoes, lumps of bacon, and even
those shapeless remnants of food left on people's
plates in restaurants, which the poor wretches
reduced to feed on them style "un arlequin"—a
harlequin. We find him drinking, with equal
gaiety and in equal quantities, iced champagne
and the cheap "vin-bleu," or blue wine, which
was consumed outside the barriers of Paris;
and swallowing from morning till night, and from
night till morning, half-pints and pints of that
corrosive poison which is retailed, under the
name of eau-de-vie, in the taverns and
"souricières," or mouse-traps, which surround the
halles or markets. His other personal appetites
were equally under the command of his intellect
and his will. Be it remembered that the leading
points of this wonderful individual's character
may legitimately be the object of public
curiosity, not because he lived the life of a
convict for several years, but because for twenty
years he was the chief of the Police of Surety,
a service which he created, and at the head of