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MEMOIRS OF VIDOCQ.

the names of the persons who constantly dealt with him. However, the little he told me aided me in forming suspicions that were plausible, and in converting my suspicions to realities. I had a considerable number of suspicious characters marched out before him, and, on his detection of them, they were put on their trials. Twenty-two were sentenced to irons, and amongst them was one of the authors of the robbery on General Boucher. Perrin was tried and convicted of receiving the stolen booty, but in consequence of the utility of the information he had given, only the minimum of punishment was pronounced against him.

A short time afterwards, two other fences, the brothers Perrot, in the hopes of clemency from the judge, followed the example of Perrin, not only in making confessions, but deciding several other prisoners on pointing out their accomplices. From their statements I brought into the power of justice two famous robbers, named Valentin and Rigaudi, alias Grindesi.

Never, perhaps, were there so many of those gentry, who unite the professions of thief and chevalier d'industrie, as in the year of the first restoration. One of the most skilful and most enterprising was Winter de Sarre-Louis.

Winter was only twenty-six, and was one of those handsome brown fellows, whose arched eye-brows, long lashes, prominent nose, and rakish air, have such charms for a certain class of females. Winter had, moreover, that good carriage, and peculiar look, which belongs to an officer of light cavalry, and he, therefore, assumed a military costume, which best displayed the graces of his person. One day he was a hussar, the next a lancer, and then again in some fancy uniform. At will he was chief of a squadron, commandant, aide-de-camp, colonel, &c; and to command more consideration, he did not fail to give himself a respectable parentage; he was by turns the son of the valiant Lasalle, of the gallant Winter, colonel of the grenadiers of the imperial horse-guard; nephew of the general Comte