have ample reparation. I will let you know who I am, and we will see if you will dare to use towards me those arbitrary measures, which even the minister would not venture to employ."
I actually thought the moment had arrived when they would apologize to him, and reprimand me. They did not doubt but that Chambreuil was an old galley-slave, but they were afraid they had offended in him some powerful man, on whom court favours were lavished. However, I asserted, with so much energy, that he was only an impostor, that they could not avoid giving a warrant to search his residence. I was to assist the commissary in this operation, at which Chambreuil was to be present; and on the road he whispered to me,—
"My dear Vidocq, there are in my secretary some papers, which it is important to me to keep from inspection; promise me that you will get them, and you shall have no cause to repent it."
"I promise you."
"You will find them under a double lock, of which I will tell you the secret."
He told me how I was to proceed; and I found the papers in the place he had pointed out, which I kept to add to those which confirmed the propriety of his apprehension. Never had a forger so carefully arranged the materials of his swindling. There were found at his house a quantity of printed papers, some with this inscription, Haras de France, others with the Police du Roi; sheets à la Tellière bearing the titles of the minister of war, statements of services, brevets, diplomas, and a register of correspondence, always open as if by accident, that any looker-in might the more easily be deceived,—were among the documents, proving the high functions which Chambreuil took upon himself. He was supposed to be on terms of intimacy with the most distinguished personages; princes and princesses wrote to him: their letters and his were transcribed beside each other, and what appears very strange is, that he was in correspondence with the
