1829.] a Police Officer. 61 
project was ripe, engaged him to assist in the robbery of a banker’s 
house, at the corner of the Rue d’Enghien, and the Rue Hauteville. 
Some reports having got about that Vidocq was a mouchard (a police 
spy), St. Germain, though he did not believe them, would not let him 
go out of his sight. Vidocq, however, by means of Annette,,the woman 
who lived with him, contrived to inform the police; the robbers were 
taken just as they were entering the house, and Vidocq, who was upon 
the wall, fell, asif shot, and was carried for dead into the house. There 
is something appalling in the details of this expedition—the coolness 
with which the preparations were made, and the fact of St. Germain, 
and Boudin, who were the principals, getting over the walls, and begin- 
ning to break into the house, with their pipes in their mouths, makes one 
shudder. _ He is minute in his description of St. Germain, who, he says, 
“was ardently fond of field sports, and was delighted at the sight of 
blood ;—his other predominant passions were play, women, and good 
living. As he had the tone and manners of good society—expressed 
himself with facility, and was always elegantly dressed—he might be 
called an extremely well-bred robber; when it served his purpose, no 
one could assume more agreeable or more insinuating manners ;” which 
seems, in all its points, to include the definition of a fine gentleman. Of 
Boudin, the other thief, he does not speak so favourably ; he says he 
had bandy legs, a peculiarity which he has observed in many professed 
assassins ; and we must admit that his opinion upon such a point is enti- 
tled to some weight. He adds, that this man’s habit of using a knife, 
and cutting up meat, which he had acquired by keeping a cook’s shop, 
had stamped his character with ferocity. 
Vidocq’s device for getting possession of the hoard of a celebrated 
receiver of stolen goods was very ingenious. He met him in the street, 
pretended to seize him by mistake for another, and having learned his 
residence, which the man told, believing that the mistake would then be 
discovered, and he should be liberated, our thief detector ran to the 
house in the dress of a porter, told the receiver’s wife that her husband 
had been seized, and desired her to make off with their goods. She im- 
mediately set about packing ; and having filled three hackney coaches 
with stolen valuables, Vidocq drove them and her to prison. By this 
time he was known to be a police agent ; his person was familiar to some 
of the thieves, and his name feared by them all. He was obliged to re- 
sort to disguises ; and having determined to capture Gueuvive, a famous 
chief of a gang, he introduced himself to him as an escaped convict. 
Gueuvive, whose confidence he soon gained in this character, proposed 
to him to way-lay Vidocq, whose person he pretended to know, and the 
latter went to his own house with the chief, and waited there for several 
hours, with some five-sous pieces, tied up in their pocket handkerchiefs, 
for the purpose of knocking out the brains of the dreaded mouchard, who, 
the author says, drily, of course did not come home that evening. Soon 
after this Gueuvive was taken, and Vidocq laughed at him. Delzéve, a 
notorious robber, had defied the police for a long time, and M. Henry 
was particularly desirous to have him captured. Vidocq waited for him 
a whole night in mid-winter, during which he preserved himself from 
freezing by getting up to his neck in a heap of dung and filth. In the 
morning he captured Delzéve, and took him, bound hand and foot, to 
M. Henry’s office, where he presented him as a new year’s gift. 
The most daring, and the most difficult of Vidocq’s exploits was the 
capture of Vossard who had committed several very extensive robberies, 
by means of false keys. This man was always armed, and had ex- 
pressed his determination of blowing out the brains of any one who should 
attempt to seize him—a threat which his dé@sperate courage left no doubt 
