leasant to your mistress.' But the latter did not stay away
long: the very next day, at night-fall, he presented himself at
my ware-house, and asked to speak to me privately. I took him
into my own room. 'We are alone?' said he to me, looking round
at the room in which we were; and when he was assured that he
had no witnesses, he drew from his pocket eleven silver forks,
and two gold watches, which he placed on a stand. 'Four hundred
francs for this would not be too much--the silver plate and the
gold watches.--Come, tip us the needful.'--'Four hundred
francs!' said I, alarmed at so abrupt a total,--'I have not so
much money.'--'Never mind; go and sell the goods.'--'But if it
should be known!'--'That's your affair; I want the ready; or if
you like it better, I'll send you customers from the
police-office;--you know what a word would do;--come,
come,--the cash, the chink, and no gammon.' I understood the
scoundrel but too well: I saw myself denounced, dragged from
the state in which I had installed myself, and led back to the
Bagne. I counted out the four hundred francs."

Considering the danger in which Vidocq was placed, his offer to serve
the police was judicious. What could be more trying than to lie at the
mercy of rascals? Obliged to be continually supplying them with
hush-money, and yet always afraid of being betrayed by them, he was in
perpetual torment; but, his services once accepted by the police, all
this was at an end. He must have felt himself like a man escaped from a
wreck, and from the horrors of contending elements; like Ulysses, to
whom we have before compared him, when, having accepted the mantle
offered him by Leucothea, he reached the friendly shore of Pheacia. Like
him, too, his toils were to be renewed. He had enemies to cope with and
subdue, and who required to be encountered with as much subtlety and
resolution as Penelope's suitors. The following is his account of his
first capture.--

"One morning I was hastily summoned to attend the chief of the
division. The matter in hand was to discover a man named
Watrin, accused of having fabricated and put in circulation
false money and bank-notes. The inspectors of the police had
already arrested Watrin, but, according to custom, had allowed
him to escape. M. Henry gave me every direction which he deemed
likely to assist me in the s