observation. "What is curious, is, that professional
thieves frequented his establishment in
preference to others. They thought it a good
joke to go and take a dram at Vidocq's, and
with him, whenever he happened to be there.
For three or four years, under the Restoration,
he set up a regular office for providing military
substitutes in the Petite Rue Sainte-Anne,
which is said to have brought him in fifty or
sixty thousand francs. He had already placed
his talents at the service of private individuals
whilst he was supposed to be devoting the whole
of his time to the public administration.
Inquiries touching the interests of families; hunting
up debtors; the surveillance of married and
unmarried women, sometimes also the surveillance
of husbands; operations more or less
avowable, but assuredly quite foreign to his
duties; he undertook everything which, if it did
not concern his office, had any remotely apparent
connexion with it. The reputation for intelligence
and activity which he had deservedly acquired
at the head of his brigade, caused the highest
families unhesitatingly to apply to him under the
most delicate circumstances, and most frequently
left him at liberty to fix the price of his services.
If, therefore, according to his enemies' account,
he left the Prefecture of Police with sixteen or
twenty thousand pounds sterling in his pocket,
we have no right to shout after him "Stop
thief!"

Vidocq's men, as well as himself, were continually
subject to be snubbed by the respectable
public. One of his subordinates, who had long
been on the alert after a couple of adroit female
thieves, at last saw them accost an elderly
gentleman, whom they relieved of his purse after a
few minutes' conversation. When the theft had
been committed, the agent contrived to learn
from the women (who were not aware of his
quality) what were the contents of the purse,
and appointed a rendezvous to meet them again,
without losing sight of their victim, whom he
followed into a café in the Rue Saint-Honoré.

"Monsieur," he said to the old gentleman,
"when you left home, you had a green silk
purse?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Which contained fifty Napoleons?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"You have just been robbed of it."

"That, is only too true, monsieur," replied
the old gentleman, after having felt in all his
pockets.

"Well, monsieur, if you will follow me, you
shall regain your purse, and the two women who
robbed you shall be arrested."

"You are a spy, it would seem," the old man
observed.

"I am an agent of the Police of Surety."

"Well, Monsieur Spy, I don't choose to go
with you. For my own part, I prefer to be
robbed; it suits my taste. What have you to
say to that?"

The agent, who did not expect an answer of
that kind, retreated from the café as cowed as a
fox that had been caught by a goose.

Vidocq's maxim was, that to keep an eye on
robbers to any good purpose, it was necessary to
frequent their society. Even when his position
as Chief of the Police of Surety was no
longer a secret, he was not the worse received
by his former fellow-convicts and fellow-
prisoners. They believed that he had entered
the service of the state against his will,
simply to avoid being sent to Brest or Toulon;
he had the art to persuade them that if he were a
spy by trade, he was still a thief by inclination.
Moreover, at that epoch, the limit which
separated the two professions was excessively
narrow and undefined; many individuals migrated
alternately from one to the other, or exercised
both simultaneously. Almost all the members
composing the Brigade of Surety, beginning
with their chief, had resided in the hulks for a
longer or shorter period. On the other hand,
the thieves no longer formed, as of old, a
society apart, in the midst of society. As soon
as the attempt was made to drive them in a
body out of Paris, they were not scrupulous
about the means of procuring the favour of
remaining there. Now, the surest way, evidently,
was to keep on good terms with the police—to
render it service—in a word, to denounce one
another. Among professional thieves there were
very few who did not regard it as a piece of good
fortune to be consulted by the police, or
employed on a job; almost all would have strained
every sinew to give proofs of their zeal, in the
hope of persuasion of its procuring, if not
complete immunity, at least a certain degree of
forbearance. The men who had the greatest
reason to be afraid of' the police were almost
always the readiest to act at its bidding.

When other eminent functionaries retire from
office, they ordinarily receive a vote of thanks, or
an honorary title, or promotion in the Order of
the Legion of Honour, or letters of nobility.
Vidocq received, what he had long ardently
longed for, letters of pardon. The cause of his
retirement from the Brigade of Surety in the
full vigour of life, remains obscure. He was
careful to repeat that he sent in his resignation;
but from the bitter and disdainful tone in which
he always spoke of his successor, it was easy to
see that his resignation was not absolutely
voluntary. Like all great artists, Vidocq estimated
himself at his full value; he seemed to
think that no Préfet of Police could ever be so
stupid as to think of dispensing with his assistance;
consequently, at the slightest interference
with his department, he was constantly
threatening to send in his resignation. He
played the trick so frequently that, one fine day,
he was quite astonished to find his resignation
accepted.

Probably the real cause of  Vidocq's disgrace
was his want of religious principles, or rather
his constant refusal to make any religious
profession. At a time when they gave three francs
each to soldiers of the line, and five francs to
those of the guard, for consenting to take the
communion, the Préfet of Police, who was a
warm partisan of the Jesuits, would not have