tive of Arras, where his father was
a baker; and from early associations he fell into courses of excess
which led to the necessity of his flying from the parental roof. After
various, rapid, and unexampled events in the romance of real life, in
which he was everything by turns and nothing long, he was liberated from
prison, and became the principal and most active agent of police. He was
made Chief of the Police de Surete under Messrs. Delavau and Franchet,
and continued in that capacity from the year 1810 till 1827, during
which period he extirpated the most formidable of those ruffians and
villains to whom the excesses of the revolution and subsequent events
had given full scope for the perpetration of the most daring robberies
and inquitous excesses. Removed from employment, in which he had
accumulated a handsome independence, he could not determine on leading a
life of ease, for which his career of perpetual vigilance and adventure
had unfitted him, and he built a paper manufactory at St. Mandee, about
two leagues from Paris, where he employs from forty to fifty persons,
principally, it is asserted, liberated convicts, who having passed
through the term of their sentence, are cast upon society without home,
shelter, or character, and would be compelled to resort to dishonest
practices did not this asylum offer them its protection and afford them
opportunity of earning an honest living by industrious labour. One
additional point of interest in the present volume is, that the author
is still living.

[We cannot follow Vidocq through his career of crime, neither would
it be altogether profitable to our readers; but the _links_ may be
recapitulated in a few words. He must have been born a thief, and
perhaps stole the spoon with which he was fed; but the _penchant_
runs in the family, for Vidocq and his brother rob the same till of
a fencing-room, but his brother is first detected, and sent off "in a
hurry," to a baker at Lille. Of course Vidocq soon gets partners in sin,
and on the same day that he has been detected by the _living_ evidence
of two fowls which he had stolen, he sweeps from the dinner table ten
forks and as many spoons, pawns them for 150 francs, spends the money
in a few hours, and is imprisoned four days. He is then released;
one of his pals gives a false alarm to Vidocq's mother, and during her
temporary absence, Vidocq enters his home with a false key, steals
2,000 francs from a strong chest, with whi