persons who visited them, a small fortune, which he proposed to share with his wife; but at the period of his liberation, my friend Madame Sablin, who also had a partiality for the property of others, was expiating her crime at Saint-Lazare. In the isolation consequent on the incarceration of his mate, Sablin, like many others, turned to evil courses, that is, having one evening in his pocket the fruits of his savings, which he had turned into specie, he went to the gambling table and lost the whole. Two days afterwards, he was found suspended in the wood of Boulogne: he had selected as the instrument of his death one of the trees in the Allée des Voleurs.
It was not, as may have been seen, without much trouble that I was able to render Sablin up to justice. Certainly if all my searches had been of necessity as tedious and difficult, I could not have accomplished them: but success generally attended me, and sometimes was so close at hand, that I myself was amazed at it.
A few days after my adventure in Saint-Cloud, the Sieur Sebillotte, a vintner in the Rue de Charenton, No. 145, complained of having been robbed. According to his statement, the thieves had effected an entrance by climbing, between seven and eight o'clock in the evening; had carried off twelve thousand francs in cash, two gold watches, and six silver spoons. There had been force used externally and internally. All the circumstances were so extraordinary, that the veracity of M. Sebillotte was somewhat doubted, and I was ordered to clear the affair up. A conversation I had with him convinced me that his complaint comprehended only plain facts.
M. Sebillotte was a landlord; he was in easy circumstances, and out of debt; consequently I could not detect in his situation a shadow of a motive which might lead me to believe that the robbery of which he complained was false; and yet it was of such a nature, that, to commit it, the persons of the house must have
