préfet of police, whose reply was to be found in his lying register, on the margin of one of his missives.
The light afforded by the search so well corroborated my assertions respecting Chambreuil, that they did not hesitate sending him to La Force, there to await his trial.
Before the tribunal it was impossible to induce him to confess that he was a galley-slave, which I persisted in calling him. He produced, on the contrary, authentic certificates, which stated that he had not left La Vendée since the year 2. The judges were for a time in doubt how to decide between him and me, but I added so many and such powerful proofs in support of my assertions, that, his identity being recognised, he was sentenced to hard labour for life, and imprisoned in the Bagne of L'Orient, where he was not slow in resuming his old profession of denouncer. At the period of the assassination of the Duc de Berry, in concert with one Gerard Carette, he wrote to the police that he had information to give respecting this fearful transaction. Chambreuil was known, and not credited; but some persons, absurd enough to believe that Louvel had accomplices, demanded that Carette should be brought to Paris. This was complied with, and Carette came, but nothing was elicited from him which threw any additional light on the subject.
The year 1814 was one of the most remarkable of my life, principally on account of the important captures which followed one another. Some of them gave rise to most whimsical incidents, and as I am in a vein I will relate one or two.
During a period of three years, a man of almost gigantic stature had been pointed out as the author of a vast many robberies committed in Paris. By the portraits which the sufferers drew of this individual, he could be no other than Sablin, an excessively skilful and enterprising thief, who, freed from many successive sentences, (two of which were in fetters,) had resumed his old trade with all the experience of the prisons.
