schemes of the Jesuits, who ruined the Bourbons
of the Restoration. Provocation, that base
and perfidious instrument, was established into
a permanent system, both to extort harsh laws
from a good-natured monarch, and to repress
individual or public opinion. Honest workmen,
enticed into public-houses by men professing to
be their fellows, were excited, under the
influence of drink, to express opinions adverse to
the government, ending by blaming the king
himself. The next step was to desire a radical
change, and to agree to take part in a pretended
plot. Amidst the fumes of wine and the clash
of glasses, a patriotic compact to that effect was
signed; immediately after the "agents
provocateurs" disappeared, to present the treasonable
act at the préfecture of police. The wretched
dupes recovered from their orgies to find
themselves in prison.

Louis the Eighteenth, taught by the
experience of exile, ascended the throne with the firm
intention of taking count of the new ideas which
had sprung up in France. Unfortunately, he was
surrounded by persons whom the Jesuits had
inspired with the hope of regaining their
ancient privileges by means of absolutism and the
right divine. They organised the faction of
"The Congregation," which formed a secret
retrograde government in correspondence with
every court in Europe. They fomented
conspiracy after conspiracy, to frighten the king
into annulling the Charter and re-establishing
the old regime. Letters, even of ambassadors
and ministers, were violated; for the Jesuits
succeeded in putting tools of their own at the
head of both the police-office and the préfecture
of police. Hypocrisy became the order of the
day; the policemen highest in favour and best
rewarded, were those who took the sacrament
frequently, went to confession, and acted as
spies on their superiors. It is a wearisome task
to follow their long and subterranean intrigues,
often ending in bloodshed—witness the fusillades
of the Rue St. Denis, which were the fruit of a
make-believe insurrection got up by a convict.
The end was the departure of Charles the
Tenth.

The Police of Surety, of which M. Canler rose
to be chief, dates no further back than 1817.
Such a police should be completely distinct from
a political police; and its special office ought to
make it irremovable in the midst of revolutionary
changes, for the very reason that its duty is to
watch over the security of life and property.
Conducted in this spirit, no one can dispute its
utility, nor call its necessity in question. When
not diverted from its real object, far from
deserving the scorn frequently heaped upon it, it
is entitled to the gratitude of honest men. Its
veritable mission is to ensure personal safety,
and the subordination of evil to good, by handing
over criminals to justice. Without this
guarantee, what would become of society? In
what a condition would the world be, if everybody
were obliged to protect himself, unaided,
against every attempt that might be made on
his purse, his honour, or his life? What a state
of things if the public had to baffle, as it could,
the schemes of villains to whom the property
of others is a constant temptation, and the art
of thieving an incessant study!

Nevertheless, the agents of the Police of
Surety were long regarded with an evil eye.
Disgust and loathing were the only sentiments
felt for them by the citizens whom they were
deputed to protect. The cause lay in the origin
of the force. Vidocq, the first chief of the
Brigade of Surety, had risen to that post by
detestable means. He had often acted as an
informer; and when threatened with imprisonment
in a bagnio, discovered, in the baseness of
his heart, a means—not of regaining his liberty,
but of alleviating his position. He offered M.
Henry, the chief of the second division of police,
to make himself useful as a prison spy; to gain
his comrades' confidence for the sake of
betraying it; and to supply information respecting
escaped convicts. Through his agency, several
dangerous robbers who had infested the capital,
were arrested; for which service he received
money rewards, varying with the importance of
the case. Finally, M. Henry set him at liberty,
on condition that his services as informer should
be continued, and that he should supply the
police with a number of offenders (whose minimum
was fixed) every month, under pain of
being sent back to Brest himself. He was
allowed four pounds a month, fixed salary, and a
premium on every arrest effected through his
means.

One of the first was that of a tanner, who had
afforded him an asylum when he came out of
prison, and whom he accused, truly or falsely,
of coining. The tanner and one of his friends,
a medical man, were condemned and guillotined,
in return for their hospitality. To make up the
required number of victims, he had recourse to
the arts of provocation, and by that means
ignobly throve, until the return of the Bourbons.
He then thought that he would make a better
thing of it by placing himself at the disposal of
the dominant political party. When no one else
could be found to pull down Napoleon's statue
from the column in the Place Vêndome, Vidocq,
with a gang of ruffians, displaced it with a rope
tied round its neck. After this exploit, he
looked down upon the Surety Police, devoting
himself almost exclusively to politics.

But in 1817, when the political ferment of
'fifteen and 'sixteen had a little subsided,
Vidocq was entrusted with a dozen policemen of
his own kind, to hunt out criminals; and it was
not until then that he was really the chief of the
Brigade of Surety, which, in 1821, was increased
to twenty-eight men, with an allowance of secret-
service money, of which very little account was
rendered.

One single instance of his mode of selecting
his subordinates will give an idea of the rest of
them. An unknown person, calling himself Jacquin,
came to Vidocq's office to offer his services
as "indicator"— that is to say, spy, denouncer.

"What can you do?" asked the man of police.

"A good many things!" replied the candidate.