Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/187

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MEMOIRS OF VIDOCQ.
171
Lui tire une carotte,
Lui montrant la couleur.[1]
L'on vient, on me ligotte,[2]
Adieu, ma cambriote,
Mon beau pieu, mes dardants.[3]
Je monte à la cigogne,[4]
On me gerbe à la grotte,[5]
Au tap et pour douze ans.[6]

Ma largue n' sera plus gironde,
Je serais vioc aussi;[7]
Faudra pour plaire au monde,
Clinquant, frusque, maquis.[8]
Tout passe dans la tigne,[9]
Et quoiqu'on en juspine.[10]
C'est un f—— flanchet,[11]
Douze longes de tirade,[12]
Pour un rigolade,[13]
Pour un moment d'attrait.

Winter, when I apprehended him, had many associates in Paris, and the Tuileries was the notorious place where the most daring and celebrated thieves assembled, who recommended themselves to public veneration by impudently bedecking themselves with all the crosses of the orders of knighthood. In the eyes of an observer who can discern accurately, the Chateau was then less a royal residence than a haunt infested by these thieves. There congregated a crowd of galley-slaves, pickpockets, and swindlers of every class, who presented themselves as the old companions in arms of Charette, La Roche-Jaquelin, Stoflet, Cadoudal, &c. The days of review and court assemblies witnessed the gathering of these pretended heroes. In my office of superior agent of police, I judged it my duty to keep a strict look-out after these royalists of circumstances. I

  1. Tell a falsehood.
  2. They tie me.
  3. My fine bed, my loves.
  4. The dock.
  5. They condemn me to the galleys.
  6. To exposure.
  7. Old.
  8. Rouge.
  9. In this world.
  10. Whatever people say.
  11. Lot.
  12. Twelve yean of fetters.
  13. Fool.