cured, and soon afterwards, having changed my dress, I returned with the commissary of police and my agents to the house of the amateur of glasses, who did not expect me so soon. He did not know me at first, and it was only at the termination of our search, that, examining me more closely, he said to me:—
"I think I recognise you, are you not a cook?"
"Yes, sir," I replied; "I am cook, tailor, hatter, looking-glass setter, and, moreover, a spy, at your service."
My coolness so much disconcerted him, that he could not utter another word.
This gentleman was named Alexandre Paruitte. Besides the two glasses, and two chimeras in gilt bronze, which he had stolen from the Palais Bourbon, many other articles were found in his apartments, the produce of various robberies. The inspectors who had accompanied me in this expedition undertook to conduct Paruitte to the depot, but, on the way, were careless enough to allow him to escape, nor was it until ten days afterwards that I contrived to get sight of him, at the gate of the ambassador of his highness the Sultan Mahmoud, and I apprehended him at the moment he got into the carriage of a Turk, who apparently had sold his odalisques.
I am still at a loss to explain how, in spite of obstacles, which the most expert robbers judged insurmountable, Paruitte effected the robbery which twice compelled me to see him. He was steadfast in his assertion of having no companions, for on his trial, when sentenced to irons and imprisonment, no indication, not even the slightest, could be elicited, encouraging the idea that he had any participators.
About the time when Paruitte carried off the glasses from the Palais Bourbon, some thieves effected an entrance in the Rue de Richelieu, No. 17, in the hotel de Valois, when they carried off considerable property, belonging to Marechal Boucher, valued at thirty thousand francs. All was fish that came to net, from the
