Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume III/Chapter 33

by Eugène François Vidocq

CHAPTER XXXIII.

The biter bit—Provocation—Wolves, lambs, and robbers—My profession of faith—The band of Vidocq and the old man of the mountain—No morality in the police—My calumniated agents—"A cat in gloves catches no mice"—The fishing-rod—Put on gloves—Desplanques, or the love of independence: or where the devil has he hid himself?—The regulation of MM. Delaveau and Duplessis—The movable roulette tables and the ultra philanthropist—Proper manners, proper bearing, proper studies—Long and short gowned Jesuits—The reign of under-petticoats—Obstinacy of robbers called reformed—Coco-Lacour, and an old friend—Castigat videndo mores.

Gaffré and Goupil having failed in their plans for my destruction, Corvet resolved to try his success in the same way. One morning, when I was in want of some particular information, I went to the house of this agent, whose wife was also attached to the police. I found both roan and wife at their lodging, and although I only knew them from having once or twice cooperated with them in some unimportant discoveries, they gave me the information I required with so much good will, that, like a man who has the feelings of good fellowship towards those with whom he is associated, I offered to regale them with a bottle of wine at the nearest cabaret. Corvet alone accepted the proffer, and we went together and seated ourselves in a private room.

The wine was excellent; we drank one, two, three bottles. A private room and three bottles of wine leads on to confidence. About an hour afterwards, I thought I perceived that Corvet had some proposal to make, and at length he somewhat suddenly said, "Listen, Vidocq, (and he knocked his glass on the table with some emphasis,) you are a jolly lad, but you are not open amongst friends; we know well enough that you are a fellow workman, but you're a deep file: we two might do a fine stroke of business."

I pretended not to comprehend him.

"Nonsense, come, come," he replied, "no gammon, that will not go down with me, I know you are a cunning fellow although I don't know your place of work I will speak to you as I would to my own brother, if I think I may depend upon you. It is all very well to serve the police, but there is nothing to be made out of it, and a crown changed is a crown spent and gone. Now if you will keep counsel, there is a job or two which I have in my eye which we will do together, and which will not hinder us from doing our friends a good turn."

"How," said I, "would you abuse the confidence placed in you? that is not right, and I am sure that if it were known at the prefecture they would give you two or three years of it at Bicêtre."

"Ah! you are like all the rest," replied Corvet, "you are going to be mealy-mouthed and squeamish; you are delicate, are you; come, come, we know one another.

I testified much astonishment at his holding such language to me, and added that I was fully persuaded that he only said so to try me, or perhaps lay a snare for me.

"A snare!" cried he, "a snare! I bring you into trouble, I had rather put my own neck in jeopardy; you must be mad to suppose it. I do not beat about the bush; when I say anything it is blunt and straight-forward; with me there is no back door, and as a proof that all is not as you believe, I will tell you that no later than this evening I am going to work. I have already laid my plan, the keys are made, and if you will come with me, you shall see how I will do the job."

"I doubt you have either lost your senses, or you wish to entangle me in your net."

"What, do you not give me any credit for better feeling? (Elevating his voice.) I tell you then you shall not have a finger in the pie. What more would you have? I shall take my wife with me, it will not be the first time, but it will be the last if you choose to make it so. With two men there is always a resource at hand. The business of to-day regards you nothing; you will wait for us in the coffee-house at the corner of the Rue de la Tabletterie. It is almost facing where we are going to work, and as soon as you see us come out do you follow; we will sell the booty, and we will go snacks. After that you will no longer distrust us. What think you?"

There was so much appearance of sincerity in this discourse, that I really hardly knew how to act with Corvet. Did he want an accomplice, or did he seek a means of destroying me? I have still my doubts on this point; but in either case Corvet was a manifest rogue.

By his own confession, his wife and he committed robberies. If he had spoken the truth, it was my duty to deliver him up to justice; if, on the contrary, he had lied, in the hope of entrapping me into a criminal action to denounce me, it was only right to prosecute the plot to its termination, that I might show to the authorities that to tempt me was labour in vain.

I had endeavoured to dissuade Corvet from his design, but when I saw that he persisted, I feigned to allow myself to be seduced.

"Well then," I said, "since it must be so, I accept the proposal."

He instantly embraced me, and the rendezvous was fixed for four o'clock, at a vintner's. Corvet returned home, and as soon as he had left me I wrote to M. Allemain, commissary of police, in the Rue Cimetière St. Nicolas, to inform him of the robbery which was to be perpetrated in the evening. I gave him, at the same time, all the necessary information for seizing on the culprits in the very commission of their crime.

I was at my post at the agreed hour; Corvet and his wife were not long after me, and after drinking a bottle or two of wine to cheer them in their work they proceeded on their enterprise. A moment afterwards; and I saw them enter a court-yard in the Rue de la Haumerie. The commissary had so well contrived that he apprehended the two at the moment when, laden with booty, they left the apartment they had ransacked. This couple were condemned to ten years' confinement.

During the trial Corvet and his wife asserted that I had tempted them to the robbery. Certainly in the line I had pursued, there was nothing that could be construed into such a temptation; besides in a robbery I do not see how there can be any provocation possible. A man is honest or he is not: if he be honest, no consideration can be sufficiently powerful to determine him on committing a crime: if he be not, he only wants the opportunity, and is it not evident that it will offer itself sooner or later?

And if this opportunity makes a rogue, may not the robber become an assassin? Certainly he who labours to demoralize a frail being, and to inculcate pernicious principles, for the horrid pleasure of ultimately delivering him up afterwards to the executioner, must be the most infamous of scoundrels. But when a man is perverted, when he declares himself in a state of hostility with his equals, to draw him into a snare; to attract him by hopes of booty which yet he is prevented from gaining; to hold out to him the bait, which eventually takes him;—is not this rendering a real service to society? It is not the sheep which is placed in the wolf's trap which creates his depredatory instinct. He has the same inclination for robbing; he is predisposed to the action, and the action will be infallibly accomplished; for, at one time or other, the robber will go any lengths to perfect his crime. What is important is, when an attempt is made and the authors detected, the eye of the police is upon them, and the body of society thus guarded and benefitted. In fact I see no harm, but quite the reverse, in casting before the viper the piece of cloth on which he may exhaust his venom.

In a large city like Paris, gangrened hearts are never wanting, nor minds criminally perverted; but every robber who infests the metropolis has not the mark of crime upon his brow. Some are skilful enough to go on a long career of guilt before they are detected. They are culpable, and should be brought to justice and convicted, that is to say, if taken with booty in hand. Well, when individuals of this kind have been pointed out to me, whether because their connections and habits rendered them suspected, or because they led a free life without any ostensible means of existence, to cut short their exploits I held out a snare for them; and, I confess it without shame, I did not make the least hesitation in doing so. Robbers are persons whose nature is to appropriate to themselves the property of another, just as the wolves are voracious animals whose nature is to attack the herds. We can scarcely confound the wolves with the lambs; but if it were possible that the one was concealed in the skin of the other, would a shepherd, when he saw the mark of their teeth, be to blame, if, to prevent future attempts, he tempted the voracity of all those whom he thought capable of biting? We may be certain that the one that bites is the one who has always been inclined to bite. If Corvet and his wife have robbed, it is that already, by fact or intent, they were robbers. On the other hand, I had never provoked them; I had only simply adhered to their proposition. It may be objected towards me, that by threatening them I could prevent them from committing the robbery which they had premeditated; but to threaten them was not to correct them: to-day they might have abstained, to-morrow they would have carried off a new booty: and certainly to have done so, they would not have called for my aid. What would have been the result? That the moral responsibility of the crime committed would have fallen on me with all its onus. And then if Corvet had any intention of implicating me in an affair of the kind, with any kind of promise from the préfet of police, after the event, did not my own personal safety prescribe the necessity of precaution, so as to undermine any trap which might be laid to ensnare me, and thus defeat those who invented and those who were the agents of it. This was the result I arrived at by denouncing Corvet to the commissary of the quarter in which his operations were to be carried on, instead of denouncing him to the préfet. By following this plan, I was assured that if he had been set on they would disavow it, and justice would be done.

If I have insisted on the fact of provocation in this affair, it is because it was the general assertion and means of defence of the majority of those whom I was the cause of apprehending in the actual commission of robbery. We shall find, in the next chapter, that the idea of resorting to so pitiful an excuse was often suggested to them by my enemies. The recital of a plot of four agents of my brigade, Utinet, Chrestien, Decostard, and Coco-Lacour, will show how contemptible were the strongest imputations against me.

I will not here repeat what I have elsewhere said on the provocation of political measures. The discontent, legitimate or not, the superciliousness, the exasperation, nay, the fanaticism, do not constitute a state of perverseness; but they may produce a sort of momentary blindness, under the influence of which the most honourable man, the most virtuous citizen, will be easily misled. Captious reasonings, perfidious combinations, an intrigue to which he has no clue, may lead him to the abyss. Satan comes and carries him to the top of a mountain, whence he shows him the kingdoms of the world; he shows him the whole of a chimerical arsenal of armies, cannons, soldiers, and people ready to rise against oppression. He seduces him by impossibilities, and for impossibilities salutes him by the title of liberator; and the wretch, whose imagination gives birth to speculative ideas, thinks that he has at last found a point of strength and a lever to shake the world. Impelled by the most execrable of demons, he dares to utter his dreams: hell has its witnesses, its judges, and the delirium terminates at the scaffold's foot: such is, in a few words, the history of the patriots of 1816, excited by the infamous Schilkin. But let us return to the "brigade de sûreté."

After the formation of this brigade, the peace-officers and their agents, who bore me no love, cried out, "shame on't:" it was they who spread about the most absurd tales of me; they coined the phrase of the "band of Vidocq," which was applied to the persons composing the police of safety: they said that it consisted only of freed galley-slaves, or of skilful old pickpockets, who knew all the rigs of prigging a reader or fogle.

"Can," said they, "such a man be allowed to have such a band? Is it not placing at his control the life and money of the citizens?" At another time they compared me to the Old Man of the Mountain; "When he likes he will cut all our throats," said the respectable M. Yvrier; "has he not his Seids? It is infamous; in what times do we live!" he added, "there is no morality, not even amongst the police." The worthy old fellow, with his morality! But it was not that which disquieted him; these gentlemen, vulgarly called peace-officers, would willingly have forgiven us for having been at the galleys, if the préfet had not, when he wished to detect or apprehend a robber, had more reliance on us than on them. Our address and our experience had the preference with the magistracy: and thus, when it was shown to them that all their efforts to effect my disgrace were useless, they changed their batteries; they did not attack me more directly, but they assailed my agents, and all the means possible of making them odious to the authorities seemed good. If a robbery were committed, either at the doors of the theatre or within the walls, they drew up a report, and the members of the terrible brigade were designated as the presumed authors of it. It was the same every time there was any large meeting, the peace-officers did not allow one occasion to escape of attacking the brigade. Not a cat was lost but they were accused of the robbery.

Fatigued at last with these perpetual inculpations, I determined to put an end to them. To reduce these respectable gentlemen to silence, I could not cut off the arms of my agents, for they were absolutely needful to them: but to conciliate all, I told them that in future they must constantly wear leather gloves, and I declared that if I met any one of them ungloved I would instantly dismiss him.

This entirely disconcerted the malevolents; henceforward it was impossible to reproach my agents for working in the crowd. The peace-officers, who well knew that the hand cannot act adroitly when covered, kept their mouths closed, remembering the proverb, "a cat in gloves catches no mice." One morning I gave this order to my agents as one which I had bit upon to put a stop to all the tattle of which they were the object.

"Gentlemen," said I, "they will no more credit your probity than they will the chastity of priests. Well, then, to prove how wrong they are, I have thought that nothing would be so natural as, in any case, to paralyze the limb which is the instrument of sin; in this instance, gentlemen, it is your hands; I know you are incapable of making improper use of them, but to avoid a shadow of suspicion, I expect that henceforward you will not appear abroad without gloves."

This precaution, I must say, was not called for by any conduct of my agents, for no robber, or galley-slave, whom I employed ever compromised himself as long as he formed one of my brigade; some have fallen again into evil ways, but their return to guilt was after having been dismissed from my band. Knowing the former course and situation of these men my power over them was arbitrarily exercised; to keep them to their duty, a will of iron and most determined resolution was required. My ascendancy over them arose from their not having any acquaintance with me previous to my entering into the police service: many had seen me at La Force or Bicêtre; but I had never been otherwise than a brother prisoner, and I could defy them to produce one affair in which I had participated, either with others or with themselves.

It must be stated that the majority of my agents were freed convicts, whom I had myself apprehended when they had been sinning against justice. At the expiry of their sentence they came to beg me to enrol them, and when I found them intelligent, I made use of them in my brigade of safety. Once in the brigade they became instantly reformed, but only in one particular,—they robbed no more: as to the rest, they were always debauched, addicted to wine, women, and play; many of them lost their monthly pay at gaming instead of paying their lodging, or the tailor who provided them with clothes. In vain did I devise means of giving them the least possible leisure, they always contrived to find time enough to indulge in their vicious habits. Compelled to devote eighteen hours per day to the police they were less debauched than if they had been entirely at leisure, but yet they committed various follies, which, when they were but trifling, I usually overlooked. To treat them with less indulgence would have been to show my ignorance of the old adage, which says, "it is impossible to stop the flow of the river." So long as their excesses were not connected with their duties, I confined myself to a reprimand, and those reprimands were frequently but so many strokes of a sword in water, but yet sometimes, according to the men I had to deal with, the due effect was produced. Besides, all the agents under my orders were persuaded that I watched them closely and incessantly; and they were not mistaken, for I had my spies, and through them learnt all they did: in fact, whether far or near, I never lost sight of them, and any infraction of the rules and regulations laid down for them was immediately punished. What will appear surprising is, that under every circumstance in which the service required it, these men, so ill disciplined in other respects, conformed to my will, even when there was a matter of danger to be performed. No man but myself, I may say, could have commanded equal devotion.

I insert my relations for the information of my readers, who may see that without mingling in politics I had occupation enough.

 

Prefecture of Police.

Regulations for the private brigade de sûreté.

Art. 1. "The private brigade de sûreté is divided into four detachments. Each of the agents commanding one detachment receives his instructions from his chief, and he receives his orders of surveillance and manœuvre from the chief of the second division of the prefecture of police; with whom he must consult every day, and whenever it may be necessary for the maintenance of order and the security of persons and property. He shall make a return to him every morning of the result of the surveillance of the preceding evening and night of his brigade, and every chief of a detachment shall bring his private report.

2. "The private agents shall exercise a severe and active surveillance to prevent offences; they shall arrest, as well on the public way as at the cabarets, and other public places, persons escaped from fetters and prisons; the freed galley-slaves who cannot show any permission for residing in Paris; those who have been sent away from the capital to their own homes, to remain there under the surveillance of the local authorities, conformably to the penal code, and who have returned to Paris unauthorized; as well as those apprehended in the very act of robbery. They shall conduct these latter before the commissary of police of the quarter, to whom they shall make their report, to inform him of the reasons for apprehending these suspected persons. In case this public functionary should be absent, they shall leave them at the nearest station, and carefully search them in presence of the commandant then on duty, that it may be correctly stated as to what property was found upon them. They shall always ask of these suspected persons their abode, to verify subsequently, and in case of a false residence being given, they shall inform the commissary of police, who will testify concerning the same. They shall point out also the witnesses who may be heard, and of whom they shall take care to procure the names and residences.

3. "The private agents can only confine in the stations the individuals before mentioned. They shall not take them thence without an order from the chief of the brigade, to whom they must give an account of their operations, or by virtue of a superior order.

4. "The police agents may not enter any private house to apprehend a person suspected of crime without being provided with an order, and without being accompanied by a commissary of police, if there be a search to be made in the house.

5. "The police agents must always walk alone, that they may the more easily observe the persons passing on the public way, and shall make occasional halts in the most populous thoroughfares.

6. "Circumspection, veracity, and discretion, being indispensable qualities for every police agent, any defection in these will be severely punished.

7. "The police agents are prohibited, day or night, from extending their surveillance to any other quarter of the city that that appointed for them by their chief, unless some extraordinary event shall imperatively summon them, and of which they shall give an exact report.

8. "The police agents are also forbidden from entering the cabarets and other public places, to sit at table and drink with common women, or other individuals who may compromise them. Those who tipple, have secret and habitual connections with female thieves or common women, or live with one of them, shall be severely punished.

9. "Gaming, being the vice which most particularly leads a man to commit base actions, is expressly forbidden to the police agents. Those who are found playing for money in any place shall be instantly suspended from their station.

10. "The police agents are required to give in to their chief of brigade an account of how their time is passed.

11. "The first infringement of the regulations herein laid down will be punished by a mulct of two days' pay: in case of a recurrence of the offence this mulct shall be doubled, besides the addition of a severe punishment should that be judged requisite.

12. "The chief of the brigade is especially charged to watch over the execution of these regulations. This is also particularly recommended to the chiefs of detachments who receive his orders, and should make their reports daily, as to what they have done conformably therewith, as well as of those they may have given to those agents under them.

"Given at the prefecture of police. 1818.
"The Minister of State and Préfet of Police.

(Signed) "Comte Angles."

"By his Excellency, the Secretary-general of the Prefecture.

(Signed) "Fortis."

 

Under M. Delaveau, I wished to add a few articles to the above; but the rigid préfet, who filled Paris and the suburbs with his ambulatory roulette tables, refused to give his sanction to a regulation which anathematized gambling. I had also classed amongst the duties of my agents, the right of sending away from the Quai de l’Ecole, the Champs Elysées, and all public places, those herds of wretches, of all ranks and ages, who abandon and prostitute themselves to a shameful and disgusting purpose, which seems to have in some measure emigrated with the Jesuits. I often begged for the repression of these disorders, but Messrs. Delaveau and Duplessis constantly turned a deaf ear to it; in fact it was impossible for me to make them understand that the law which punishes the offence against good manners is applicable to these ultra philanthropists, whenever they sin so grossly. I have not yet been able to explain why such hideous depravities were in some measure privileged; perhaps there existed a sect who, to detach itself from the world on the one hand, and to withhold itself from its most delicious influences, had sworn hatred to the loveliest half of the human species; perhaps, like the society of bonnes lettres, and that of bonnes études, they formed a society of bonnes mœurs—jesuitical manners. I know nothing of it, but in a few years the crime has made so much progress that I counsel our ladies to be on their guard; if it continue, farewell to the empire of the petticoat, the long or short gown; the jesuits only love their own.

I have generally found that amongst the members composing the brigade, those who went heart and hand into its duties became at length tolerable members of society, that is to say, that leaving one trade to enter upon another, they pursued their path steadily. Those, on the contrary, who did not go readily to work, fell into irregular habits, which invariably 1ed to an unhappy termination. I had particularly occasion to make an observation of this nature with reference to a man named Desplanques, who was my secretary.

This Desplanques was a well-bred young fellow; he had talent, good style in writing, was a fine penman, and had several other qualifications which might have fed him to an honourable rank in the world. Unfortunately he had an addiction to robbery, and to perfect his disgrace he was most superlatively idle. He was a robber with the soul of a pick-pocket, which is tantamount to saying, that he was unfitting for anything requiring assiduity and energy. As he was not punctual, and acquitted himself very ill in his department, it happened that I frequently scolded him: "You are always complaining of my negligence," he replied, "with you one must be a slave: on my faith, I am not accustomed to be so used." Desplanques had just left the Bagne, where he had passed six years.

In admitting him into the brigade, I thought I had made an admirable acquisition, but I was not slow in being convinced that he was incorrigible, and I found myself compelled to dismiss him. Being then without resource, he betook himself to the only mode of existence which in such a situation can be reconciled with the love of ease. Passing one evening through the Rue du Bac, he broke a square of glass in a money changer's shop, and ran off with a wooden bowl full of money. At the same moment he heard a cry of "stop thief," and was warmly pursued. At the words "stop, stop," officiously repeated from all quarters, Desplanques redoubled his speed, and would soon have been out of reach, but at a turning in the street, he fell completely into the arms of two agents, his old comrades: the rencontre was fatal. He tried to escape, but his efforts were useless; the agents fastened on him and dragged him to the commissary, where the positive commission was immediately sworn to. Desplanques was an old offender, and condemned to the galleys for life: he is now at Toulon, where he is undergoing his sentence.

People who judge of all without having any knowledge of individual facts, have asserted that agents who have been originally robbers, must, necessarily, have an understanding with them, or at least temporize with them as long as they are sufficiently adroit as not to expose themselves. I can attest that robbers have no more cruel enemies than the freed convicts who have assembled under the banner of the police; and that they, following the usual examples in such cases, never exert more zeal than when they are serving a friend; that is to say, seeking to apprehend an ex-comrade. In general, a robber who thinks himself reformed is without pity for his ancient comrades; the more he has been intrepid in his time, the more implacable he will be.

One day, Cerf, Macolein, and Dorlé were brought to the bureau charged with robbery. On seeing them, Coco-Lacour, who had long been their companion and Ultimate friend, was apparently overpowered with indignation; he rose and apostrophized Dorlé in these terms.

Lacour. Well, sir, what are you still incorrigible?

Dorlé. I do not understand you, M. Coco, with your morality!

Lacour (in a rage.) Who do you call Coco? Learn that that name is not mine; I call myself Lacour; yes, Lacour, do you hear?

Dorlé. Ah! my God! I know it too well, you are Lacour; but you have not, I dare say, forgotten that when we were comrades you had no other name but Coco, and all the friends you have call you by that name, and no other. I say, Cerf, have you ever seen a cocoa of such strength?

Cerf (shrugging his shoulders.) There are no children left, all the world is mingled, monsieur Lacour!

Lacour. It is good, good, very good, other times, other manners; castigat ridendo mores; I know that in my youth I may have committed some little venial offences, but ——

Lacour tried to arrange some words, in which the word honour was distinguishable; but Dorlé who was not in a humour to listen to his remonstrance, closed his mouth by recalling to him all the various times when they had worked together. A thousand times Lacour has experienced disagreeables of this kind: and if ever he reproached the robbers with their tenacity for sticking to business, his good intentions were always recompensed by similar impertinences.