iature, a cameo, a mosaic, a manuscript, a print, a medal, or
a jewel that pleases them; they are called _Chipeurs_. If the
_Chipeur_ be rich, no heed is paid to him, he is too much above
such a larceny to impute it to him as a crime; if he be poor, he is
denounced to the attorney-general, and sent to the galleys, because
he robbed from necessity. It must be owned that we have strange ideas
as to honesty and dishonesty."

This is what we call _Shoplifting_. A milliner once told us that
ribands and flowers not unfrequently attach themselves to the cuffs and
sleeves of fair purchasers.

_Careurs_

Belong to the same class of thieves, and are gipsies, Italians, or Jews.
The female Careurs are very expert in robbing priests; and Vidocq
apprehended a mother and daughter for more than sixty such offences.

"The gipsies do not confine themselves to these means of appropriating
to themselves the property of another: they frequently commit murder,
and they have the less objection to commit a murder, because they have
no feeling of any kind of remorse; and they have a peculiar kind of
expiation whereby they purify themselves. For a year they wear a coarse
woollen shirt, and abstain from '_work_' (robbing). This period
elapsed, they believe themselves white as snow. In France, the majority
of the persons of this caste call themselves Catholics, and have every
external show of great devotion. They always carry about them rosaries
and a crucifix; they say their prayers night and morning, and follow
the service with much attention and precision. In Germany, they seldom
exercise any other calling than that of horse doctor, or herbalist:
some addict themselves to medicine, that is to say, profess to be in
possession of secret means of effecting cures. A vast number of them
travel in bodies, some tell fortunes, others mend glass, china, pots,
and pans; woe to the inhabitants of the country overrun by these
vagabonds. There will infallibly be a mortality amongst the cattle, for
the gipsies are very clever in killing them, without leaving any traces
which can be converted into a charge of malevolence against them. They
kill the cows by piercing them to the heart with a long and very fine
needle, so that the blood flowing inwardly, it may be supposed that the
animal died of disease. They stifle poultry with brimstone; they know
that then they will give them the dead birds; and whilst they imagine
that they have a taste for carrion, t