mation about its inhabitants; who go knocking turned thieves, and were found guilty. The from door to door, and as soon as they come to shoemakeress (at least so Vidocq thinks) reone where no answer is given, make use of their sisted temptation better. But, however that picklock. They run the risk of being surprised may be, her reputation was so notorious, and by the tenant, who may be indulging in a short her shoes of so remarkable a cut, that when an repose, or who, busy in some back room, may individual was arrested and brought before M. come forward on hearing the noise which they Limodin for examination, he was mercilessly cannot help making. In general, the Cambrio- sent to Bicêtre, if unfortunately he wore shoes leurs à la flan earn very little money, and are supplied from the warehouse of Mother Rousselle. The female thieves, for their part, patroFormed in the school of prisons, they modify nised a certain Madame Mulot as their dresstheir mode of proceeding, and when they regain maker. She only, in their opinion, could show their liberty, they take the degree of Carou-off their figure to advantage, and make on the bleurs; that is, they no longer venture to attack seams the raised ribs which it pleased their ladya lodging without coming to an understanding ships to call nervures. with the servants, the porters, the floor-polishers, or the water-carriers, who not only acquaint them with the tenant's habits, but also supply them with impressions of all the locks, from which they make false keys.

soon arrested.

The third variety, the most redoubtable of all, are the Nourrisseurs (nurses or feeders), for the most part liberated or escaped from the galleys. They are so called because they prepare an affair for several months, until the moment of putting it into execution with scarcely any risk be arrived. They know beforehand almost exactly what is to be found in an apartment, the day when the landlord has received his rents, or a retired official his six months' pension.

Perhaps the most talented of Vidocq's compositions is the prospectus of his Information Office, which appeared in all the Paris journals during June, 1833.

VIDOCQ.

OFFICE FOR INFORMATION IN THE INTEREST OF

COMMERCE.

Rue Cloche-Perce, No. 12, on the Second Floor,
Paris.

There is a want which has been long and acutely felt by commerce, namely, that of a special establishment, having for its object the procuring of information respecting pretended dealers, that is to say, respecting swindlers, who, by qualifying themselves as bankers, merchants, and commissioners, usurp the public confidence, and make daily dupes of bonâ fide commercial men.

Writers who have specially busied themselves with statistical researches in these matters, put down the industrials of this class at so high a figure as 20,000. I am willing to admit that there may be some exaggeration in the calculation; but I affirm that the most moderate estimate cannot be lower than 5000. Let us take that datum for our basis.

These five thousand individuals absorb from commerce an average amount of ten francs per day. This is fixing at the very lowest the daily expenses of these gentlemen, who habitually lead a merry life, and are ordinarily inclined to the most expensive passions.

One of their strange peculiarities is, that when a renowned cambrioleur has adopted a style of cravat and waistcoat, all his colleagues imitate him in respect to those two articles of clothing. Flaring colours, red, yellow, and such-like, are those of which they are the fondest. In 1814, Vidocq arrested a gang of twenty-two thieves, and twenty of the number wore waistcoats of the same form, and made of the same stuff. They seemed to have been cut after the same pattern, and out of the same piece. In general, thieves are like women of bad character; there is always something which betrays their profession. They are very fond of a medley of colours; and with all the pains they take to ape respectable people, the most distinguished air they are able to assume is that of a working man in his Sunday's best. There are very few of them who have not their ears pierced. Rings and hair chains mounted in gold are almost indispensable articles order to obtain the eighteen mulions of francs, these But it ought to be very carefully observed that, in of their dress. The chain is ostentatiously dis-industrials swindle commerce out of a sum which is played outside the waistcoat; it is always a trophy of love, and is proudly paraded. Plush hats, with one half of the nap smooth and the other half brushed back the wrong way, are their great delight.

Thieves have habits to which they stick all the while they exercise their profession. Some time back, they all bought their shoes of a woman who was called Mother Rousselle, and who lived in the Rue de la Vannerie. At the same epoch, Gravès, in the Rue de la Verrerie, and Tormel, in the Rue Culture Sainte-Catherine, were the only tailors who enjoyed the privilege of clothing these gentlemen. Evil communications corrupted both the tailors; father and son at last

Their united expenditure will therefore amount Per day, to 50,000 francs Per month, to......... 1,500,000 Per year, to............ 18,000,000 [Eighteen millions of franes make seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds sterling.]

at least the double, often the triple of that; because they pay dear for what they buy, they sell at very reduced prices, and they pay to the go-betweens of their dirty affairs very considerable commissions.

We may, therefore, estimate at from thirty-six to forty millions of francs, as the very lowest figure, the sum which they annually filch away from real

traders.

It is in order to reduce perhaps to nothing, or at thirty-six or forty millions of francs, that I offer my least to a very trifling sum, this immense annual loss of services to commerce.

An attempt which has been recently made seemed to have an object analogous to that which I propose. The journal The Tocsin was announced as intended to unveil the intrigues of these industrials, and to

furnish commerce with the required information. But, to say nothing of the defects peculiar to that enterprise, and which must necessarily cause it to miscarry, I am convinced that publicity is neither decent nor profitable in matters of this kind. The most useful idea remains sterile and fruitless as soon as it degenerates into scandal.

The establishment which I have the intention of

founding will present none of these grave inconveniences, and its utilitarian object will recommend it, beforehand, to the favourable opinion of commerce, until it shall have acquired a recommendation in its

services.

Under the title of Bureau de Renseignements, my establishment will furnish, on the spot, to the commercial gentlemen who honour it with their confidence, positive information respecting the persons who, without being known to them, ask for credit.

To cut short any false interpretation which might throw alarm into real commerce, I hasten to declare that such information will never be supplied with

regard to dealers who are really in trade, whatever may be their solvability in other respects. The Information Office will meddle only with false or pretended commercial men, who make a business of buying without paying, that is, of swindling.

known persons, advice suitable for their escape from the snares of thieves and rogues of every class.

The bureaux will be open from ten in the morning till eight in the evening. Every demand should be made in writing, for the sake of expediting business.

None but prepaid letters and parcels are received. The scheme took; he reckoned as many as eight thousand subscribers; and, as he said with pride on the occasion of his trial, in 1843, not one of them raised his voice to complain of his relations with him. In 1835, he published a sort of report of the principal operations of his agency, from the first of January to the first of March; and he proved that, in the space of those two months, he had helped eleven heads of mercantile houses to recover more than sixty thousand francs' worth of goods that had been hocuspocussed out of their possession.

Besides the persons who occasionally rendered him paid or gratuitous services, Vidocq employed not less than twenty persons, in either sedentary or active occupations; some for correspondence, for matters in litigation, and for For a long time past I have been ripening the pro- the drawing up of statements, others for exject which I now submit to the public. am, perhaps, plorations, investigations, for watching persons, the only person who can undertake and properly and inquiries of all sorts. Unfortunately, these fulfil the task which I propose to myself. The office underlings, of either kind, were very far from which I have filled has given me an opportunity of being irreproachable in their antecedents, whilst becoming acquainted with swindlers and their tricks. the actual conduct of several of them gave them Since I have quitted the public service, I have col-no chance of gaining the prize for good belected innumerable documents, which the multi-haviour. It was the weak side of Vidocq's enplicity of my occupations did not then permit me to terprise; he felt it so keenly that, as a general rule, one half of his troop employed the greater part of their time in watching the other half.

procure.

The whole personnel of these swindlers will be severely kept in note. I shall have at my disposal the list of all the individuals who, from twenty-five to fifty years back, have been accused, detained, or condemned for swindling.

Such is my project: I believe it to be eminently useful to my fellow-citizens, and it is with this idea

that I undertake it.

The swindlers whose plots I wish to baffle will make personal attacks upon me, in order to injure my establishment. Their hatred will be my title to the confidence of honest men.

My conduct has been severely commented (on a beaucoup glosé sur mon compte): in general, those who talk about me are very ignorant of what I have done, and attribute to me things which I have not done.

In the difficult functions which I have fulfilled, I have never mixed myself up with the political police. I have delivered the capital of thieves who infested it; I now wish to deliver commerce from the swindlers who plunder it.

The compensation which I shall require from persons who give me their confidence is fixed at so extremely low a rate, that it will not be felt at all by the majority of commercial men. For twenty francs a year engage to furnish information on all

occasions to mercantile men who become subscribers to my agency. Those who do not think fit to enjoy this facility, will pay five francs for each inquiry or consultation.

We undertake all sorts of researches and explorations in the interest of families and of injured persons, and of all contentious affairs, whether in France or in foreign countries.

In this establishment will be found an office where, under the seal of secrecy, there will be given, only to

Besides these inferior gentry, he had a secretary whose task was to edit and keep an eye on the correctness of the literary department.

A young man, who had completed his term of military service, returning to the metropolis world, with thirty sous in his pocket and hope which claims to be the capital of the civilised in his bosom, read on the walls a bill advertise

ment to this effect:

"Wanted, Rue Neuve-Saint-Eustache, No. 10, at the Office of Commercial Information, an editing secretary" (un secrétaire rédacteur).

The adventurer hastened to solicit the vacant

employment, and found himself in the presence of a thick-set man with blue eyes, wide open lips, and an abundance of grisly hair. He was breakfasting off a service of silver gilt, and kept tossing whole sausages to a bull-dog that lay at his feet.

Monsieur," he said, staring at his visitor like a gendarme who is going to ask you to produce your passport, "do you write well from

dictation ?"

"I believe so," was the modest reply.

Then, offering a quire of paper, he pronounced the following sentences, to judge of the candidate's capabilities:

"The party is inclined to debauch; but, profligate and very astute, he sometimes makes use of a leadheaded cane and a false nose. Apply to him, first, the sack trick; then, successively, the barrel organ, and the chimney fire."

"All you will have to do," he added, "is to put into passable French the reports that will be brought to you."

While the amanuensis was puzzling his brains he applies to scoundrels no greater than himover the mystic sense of this communication, the self, belong simply to the part he had undertaken master, satisfied with the performance, neither to act. We should smile, if we did not feel disasked for name, nor position in life, nor testi- gusted, when he sets himself up as a lecturer on monial of morality, nor certificate of vaccina- morality; for the kind which he practised in the tion, but triumphantly installed him in his exercise of his functions would not suit the taste office. of everybody. It is of no use his talking about his duties; very few people would like to do their duty by the employment of similar means. Even when we read his own proper narratives, we hardly ever feel interested for him, but for those whom we are inclined to call his victims. Some of these stories (that of Henriette, for instance) make the reader's cheek burn “Madame opened her window at nine in the morn- with indignation. He died, like a seconding; from half-past eight the party had been pacing rate saint, with all the sacraments of the backwards and forwards in the street like a sentinel. Romish Church. The Lord have mercy on his -We followed him without attracting notice. soul! But out of the ten thousand individuals Madame changed the rose-bush from her side win-whom he sent to the hulks during his eighteen dow; then the party waved his handkerchief and years of office, it is probable that there were not two who were capable of such odious treachery.

These reports, hurriedly written on the knee, upon scraps of paper of every shade and shape, put the secretary's imagination upon the rack. Here is one as a sample:

went away.

"Madame went out at eleven o'clock-went into a linen shop; we looked at her through the embroidered muslins displayed in the window.-The shopwoman gave her a letter; she read it and returned it, probably to avoid compromising herself;she left, and went in the direction of the Rue SaintHonoré.

"She entered the Church of Saint-Roch; we

followed her up to the spot where to-day, Holy Thursday, they washed the feet of the poor.-The party was waiting at the grand altar; they went out together, and took the hackney carriage No. 482, "I lost sight of them.

"I ran as quick as possible to take my place close to the customs officers at the Barrière de l'Etoile. No. 482 passed an instant afterwards; I followed the carriage, holding on behind; it stopped at a house in Auteuil. The carriage went away; I

waited till night to no purpose; I found out too late

that the house had two entrances."

On the margin of the report, and in red ink, figured these words by the master: "Imbecile, not to try the portfolio trick."

TOM IN SPIRITS.

Ir was no extraordinary thing, some two hundred years ago, for the Evil Spirit to have direct and personal intercourse with mankind. All the witch trials turned on this, the corner-stone of demonology; and devils as goblin pages, familiars, changeling children, and demon lovers, were to be found wherever there was physical deformity or mental weakness. Indeed, anything unusual in mind or body was sure to be referred to demoniacal influence, and even a sudden change of fortune did not escape the universal charge. The Devil did everything. If a man got drunk and dreamed drunken dreams, the devil had carried him off bodily to such and such a place, and showed him in the flesh what his mind alone had fancied; if a man had fits, he was possessed; if a young maid This secretary only remained a fortnight. were hysterical, she was bewitched; if an old It is therefore clear that Vidocq, in his latter woman were spiteful, cunning, ugly, or eccendays, had remedied some of the defects of his tric, she was a witch, and must suffer the early want of education, so as to render himself doom of witchcraft; if a child were fanciful, independent of literary help from others; and it lying, or mischievous, the whole country is probable that, at all times, he could dictate must be up and astir to discover its perwith clearness and ability. The letter in our cor-secutor, and if none in human form could be respondent's possession is fluently and not in- decided on, then it was the devil himself who elegantly written. The hand is unusually good was in fault, and prayer and exorcism must for France; and it is nearly free from ortho- drive him forth. graphical error, which is a still greater rarity in that country. Bad spelling stares you in the face from the most unsuspected quarters and in the most unexpected places. At Stork-street, Dieppe, the word Cigogue was, and may be still, spelt with an S. There is not much exaggeration in Paul de Kock's joke of the painter who, being paid by the letter, always spelled Epicier, grocer, with two p's, two c's, and a t at the end. That Vidocq also eventually arrived at a certain degree of outward polish, follows from his first having penetrated the great world in disguise, and latterly being received by persons belonging to good society. The hard names

As for devils haunting houses, they were as common as rats and mice; which undesirable animals indeed often figured in people's imaginations as possessed of hoofs and claws, tail, fiery eyes, and polished horns; according to the most reliable portraits given of those subterrene personages. There was the drummer demon of Tedworth, who plagued Mr. Mompesson and his family out of their senses; and there was the Demon of Woodstock-a royalist devil-who harried the Parliamentary Commissioners to within an inch of their lives, and never ceased until he had harried them clean out of the place; and there was the Devil of Glenluce-a controversial devil,

and the funniest fellow of them all-showing no end of boldness and broad humour, and eminently deserving the special embalming which he has received.

Now, this was the history of the Devil of Glenluce:

throwing peats down the chimney, pulling down turf and "feal" from the roof and walls, stealing their coats, pricking their poor bodies with pins, and raising such a clamour as there was no peace nor rest to be had.

The case was becoming serious. Glenluce objected to being made the head-quarters of the Demon; and the ministers convened a solemn humiliation; the upshot of which was, that Weaver Campbell was positively to take back his unlucky Tom, with the Devil or without him. For this was the point at issue in the beginning, the motive of which is not very hard to be discovered. Whereupon Tom returned; but, as he crossed the threshold, he heard a voice

In 1654, one Gilbert Campbell was a weaver in Glenluce: his eldest son, Tom-the important character in the drania-was a student at Glasgow college; and there was a certain sturdy old beggar, Andrew Agnew by name, afterwards hanged at Dumfries for blasphemously saying, "There was no God but salt, meal, and water" -who every now and then came to Glenluce to ask alms. One day old Andrew came to the Campbells as usual, but got nothing; in conse-"forbidding him to enter that house, or any quence whereof so you are required to believe other place where his father's calling was exerhe sent a devil to haunt the house; for, it was cised." Was Tom, the Glasgow student, afraid soon after he was refused, that the stirs began, of being made a weaver, consent or none deand what could they be but from the Devil sent manded? In spite of the warning voice he by old Andrew in revenge? Young Tom Camp- valiantly entered, and his persecutions, of bell was the worst beset of all; the Demon per- course, began at once. They were tremendouspetually whistling and rioting about him. Once, in fact, they were so tremendous that he was Jennet, the daughter, going to the well, heard forced to return to the minister's house; but he a whistling behind her, like that produced evidently left behind him some imitator or disby the small slender glass whistles of children, ciple worthy of his teaching, for on Monday, the and a voice like the damsel's, saying, "I'll cast 12th of February, the Demon began to speak thee, Jennet, into the well! I'll cast thee, to the family, who, nothing afraid, answered Jennet, into the well!" About the middle of quite cheerily, and the family and the Devil November, when the days were dark and the soon got so confidential and familiar that nights long, things got very bad. The foul they had long talks together; but on what fiend threw stones in at the doors and windows topics does not quite appear. The ministers, and down the chimney head; cut the warp and hearing of this, convened again, and met threads of Campbell's loom; slit the family at Weaver Campbell's to see what they could coats and bonnets, shoes and hose, into ribbons; do. As soon as they entered, Satan began: pulled off the bed-clothes from the sleeping Quum literatum is good Latin," quoth he. children, and left them cold and naked; opened These were the first words of the Latin ruchests and trunks, and strewed the contents diments, as taught in the grammar school. over the floor; knocked everything about, and Tom's classical knowledge was coming into ill-treated the bairns; and, in fact, persecuted play. the whole family in a most merciless manner. The weaver sent his children away, thinking their lives but barely safe; and, in their absence had no assaults whatever a thing to be especially noted. But on the wise minister's representing to him that he had done a grievous sin in so withdrawing them from God's punishment, they were brought back again, in contrition. Nothing ensued until Tom appeared. Unlucky Tom brought the Devil back with him, and there was no more peace to be had.

After a while he cries again: "A dog! a dog!" The minister, thinking he was alluded to, answered, "he thought it no ill to be reviled of him;" to which Satan replied civilly: "It was not you, sir, I spoke to. I meant the dog there," for there was a dog standing behind backs. They then went to prayer. Always at such times, Tom, or the Devil, remained reverently silent; his education being not carried out yet to the point of scoffing. Immediately after prayer was ended, a counterfeit voice asked, Would ye know the witches of Glenluce? I will tell ye them," naming four or five persons of indifferent repute; one of whom was dead. The weaver said this, thinking to have caught him tripping, but the Demon answered promptly, "It is true she is dead long ago, but her spirit is living with us in the world."

On the Sunday following Tom's return, the house was set on fire-the Devil's doing: but the neighbours put it out again before much damage had been done. Monday was spent in prayer; but on Tuesday the place was again set on fire, and again saved by the neighbours' help. The weaver, in much trouble, went to the minister, and besought him to take back that The minister replied, saying ("though it unlucky Tom, whom the Devil so cruelly perse- was not convenient to speak to such an excuted which request, after a while, he "conde- communicated intercommuned person"), "The scended to," though assuring the weaver that he Lord rebuke thee, Satan, and put thee to silence. would find himself deceived if he thought that We are not to receive information from thee, the Devil would quit with the boy. And, indeed, whatsoever fame any person goes under. Thou so it proved, for they were soon again sore art seeking but to seduce this family, for troubled: the Demon cutting their clothes, | Satan's kingdom is not divided against itself."