his infancy, and with whom he was constantly to be found. He was "the ladies' toy, the charming boy;" and when the duties of their calling took them away from a leisure of so much innocence, little Coco went into the garden, and played with the throng of blackguards, who, between the games of hockey and peg-top, kept a school of initiation into the mysteries of sleight of hand. Nourished by prostitutes, and taught by pickpockets, there is no need to descant at length on the 'trade' in which he acquired an early proficiency. The road he travelled was a dangerous one. One female, who perhaps thought herself entitled to give a better direction to his 'studies,' invited him to her house; her name was Marechal, who kept a notorious house in the Place des Italiennes. There Coco was well nurtured; but complaisance was the only moral quality which his hostess sought to develope, and very complaisant he became: he was at everybody's beck and call, and made himself subservient to the minutest wants of the establishment, whose every detail was perfectly familiar to him. However young, Lacour had his days and hours for walking abroad, and it appears that he did not pass them idly; for before he attained his twelfth year, he was quoted as one of the greatest adepts at stealing lace, and in a very little time his frequent arrests would have procured for him the first rank amongst the shoplifters, called knights of the post (chevaliers grimpants). Four or five years detention at Bicêtre, where he was confined, as a dangerous and incorrigible thief, did not amend him; but there he learned the trade of a cap-maker, and received other instruction.
Insinuating, plastic, with a soft voice, and a face effeminate but not handsome, he took the fancy of a M. Mulner, who, sentenced to sixteen years of hard labour, had obtained permission to await the expiration of his sentence at Bicêtre. This prisoner, who was brother to a banker at Anvers, was a man of good education; and to divert his thoughts, took Coco
