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MEMOIRS OF VIDOCQ.
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rier with it, and then left it with us. He stopped on the road, to call at a house with Victoire Bigan, and Lefebvre and I went to commit (at Labatty's) the robbery for which we were subsequently apprehended. The crow-bar and a part of the booty stolen were conveyed to Leblanc's by Lefebvre.

"Leblanc, who was tried with us, had engaged us not to accuse him, and not to contradict Peyois, who was to say that it was M. Vidocq who had given him three francs to buy the crow-bar; and he has promised to give me a sum of money if I would consent to assert the same thing. I did consent, fearing that if I told the truth my situation would be still worse."

(Declaration of 3d October, 1823.)

Lefebvre, who afterwards confessed, without having any communication with Berthelet, confirmed his confession, as far as concerned Leblanc. "If I did not say," he added, "that it was he who furnished Berthelet with the money for the purchase of the crow-bar, it is because Peyois had engaged me to say that it was he, Peyois, who had bought it. Peyois being compromised in this robbery, was unwilling to charge Leblanc, who was friendly to him and would serve him again." A Monsieur Egly, chief of the employés at the Conciergerie, and Lecomte and Vermont, confined in that prison, having been heard by M. Fleuriais, related many conversations, in which Berthelet, Lefebvre, and Peyois had arranged, in their presence, how they would inculpate me. In their evidence all the convicts agreed that I had endeavoured to dissuade them from doing wrong. Vermont related, besides, that one day he having blamed them because they had compromised me without any motive, they replied: "Stuff! we will do the trick; we would have compromised the eternal Father to save ourselves; but it has not turned out so well as might be."

Peyois, who was the youngest of the party, was less free in his replies: his friendship for Leblanc induced