Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The existence of these wretches is sufficiently unenjoyable. At once hunters and game, with their ears bent to catch the slightest sound, always on the alert, never sleeping without one eye open, devouring their meals whenever they can get any, tormented as much by their passions as by their fears, they feel, whilst pursuing their sinister projects, that the police are dogging their steps, that hounds of terribly keen scent are busy upon their track. This life of stratagem[{321}] and law-breaking is said to have its charms—and justly, perhaps, since so many men voluntarily choose it; but if the excitement of the constant hazard they run, combined with the chance of spoil, exhilarates youthful malefactors, many an old thief, on the other hand, disgusted, sickened by incessantly playing the part of a stag at bay, has gone to the Préfecture of Police and said: “I am the man. Arrest me. I can’t stand this sort of life.”

TRAM AT THE BARRIER.

Semi-starvation is the fate of a large proportion of these criminals. Many of them for years together have slept on rude couches lit only by the stars—under bridges, in half-built boats or houses, or squares: many of them do not know what daily bread is. “Do you like being here?” said an official to a little girl of twelve who was temporarily lodged in the “depôt,” her father and mother both having been arrested for crime. “Oh, yes,” was the reply, “we have something to eat here every day.”

It would be difficult to fix, even approximatively, the number of persons who in Paris give themselves up to theft. The ticket-of-leave men, notorious vagabonds and others, are well known to the police. But there are numbers of persons, in a town so populous as Paris, who become thieves through circumstances: from finding themselves in a difficult position, or from a sudden temptation.

In this connection M. Maxime Ducamp may once more be cited. “There is an incontrovertible fact,” he says, “which natural history explains. Criminals—those, I mean, who live by crime—are always the same to whatever class of society they may belong. They are actuated by the same passions, the same wants, the same appetites. Whatever certain philosophers may have said on the subject, a man steals very rarely to get bread. The three great tempting causes are women, cards, and drink.” There are exceptions, however, which writers on the[{322}] subject have duly noted. Rafinat, who was mixed up with the robbery of medals from the Bibliothèque Royale, used to send home to his family the product of what he himself called his “expeditions.” For one, however, of this kind there are ten thousand who steal only to satisfy their brutal tastes. An old proverb says, “Generous as a thief,” and the proverb is right. The thief who saves the produce of his robberies is an anomaly only to be met with among certain “receivers” of Jewish race.

As soon as the thief has made a good stroke, he gives away money right and left, pays his debts, lends to anyone who happens to be in need, and invites everyone to share his good fortune. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and can refuse nothing to anyone. Being constantly watched, thieves denounce themselves by their excessive expenditure, which seems to be one of their invincible needs; and they then fall promptly into the hands of the police. They know that they are pursued; the theft committed one day may cause their arrest the day afterwards. They wish, therefore, to enjoy themselves, and they spend in debauchery the time still left at their disposal. So the pig in a shipwreck will devour food at the very moment when the vessel is sinking.

“Bad roads end in pitfalls,” say the French peasants. Criminals know this, and the road they follow leads invariably to prison, the galleys, the penal colonies, the scaffold. Those who by cunning or good luck succeed in escaping the police, which is on the watch for them, and Justice, which claims them as her own, are singularly rare, and amongst them may be cited a man of a certain celebrity, who flourished some forty or fifty years ago. His name was Piednoir. He was not an assassin; he knew the Code, and never risked his head. He was content to commit robbery by means of false keys. But he was a past-master in his art, and from 1834 until 1843 escaped from the consequences of twenty-one different warrants of arrest. He had excellent manners, led an elegant life, and bitterly regretted having had his ears pierced in his childhood, which, he said, gave him rather a common air. He employed ordinary thieves to prepare an affair, and when everything was ready took charge of its execution. He then divided the plunder into shares, reserving the lion’s part for himself. When his accomplices were brought to trial they behaved towards him with wonderful devotion. One of them, however, admitted that he had been twice in relations with Piednoir; on one occasion, when Piednoir met him in the disguise of a rag-picker, a second time when, dressed as a man of fashion and driving a tilbury, he pulled up in front of the Café de Paris and threw the witness a two-sous piece wrapped up in a scrap of paper which contained written instructions concerning a projected robbery. Piednoir was condemned in his absence to twenty years’ hard labour. He was living at the time luxuriously in Holland on the products of his industry as a thief. Most of these melancholy personages have, according to M. Maxime Ducamp, to whom no side of Paris life, no class of the Paris population, is unfamiliar, a common, contemptible appearance, though some few of them have a certain distinction, natural or acquired, which renders them more and more redoubtable. Mitifiau, who took the title of Count de Belair, and claimed to be the son of a general who died under the first Empire, was a man of irreproachable manners. He went into society—the very best society, to which none but well-bred persons are supposed to be admitted—and lived by swindling, by clever thefts, and by card-sharping. He was arrested as he was committing a robbery by means of false keys.

Some of these malefactors would seem to be separated for ever from crime by the elevated tastes they profess and the intellectual occupations in which they are apparently absorbed. But their evil instincts are too much for them. Thus it once happened that a mathematician, versed in the highest sciences, and dreaming only of abstract speculation, was condemned to seven years’ imprisonment for stealing from a shop. But for the extraordinary sagacity and entire absence of illusions on the part of the police, many a malefactor would succeed in concealing his true character. Some years ago a certain Toutpriant, living at No. 28, Rue Vert, had eight horses in his stables, besides carriages from the best makers. He was a retired clerk, who planned robberies on a large scale, training and directing a number of young brigands to that end, and himself living under a false name either on his own estate, where he had excellent shooting, or at fashionable watering-places. “There are some families,” says M. Ducamp, “which, by a wretched tradition, seem given up to theft from generation to generation. The grandfather was a thief; the father stole, the son steals, the grandson will steal. The child is taught his trade from the earliest years. He learns to step without making[{323}] a sound, to see without appearing to look, to open a lock with a nail, to hide what he has stolen, and to cry out ‘Stop thief!’ when he is pursued. The families of Piednoir, Cœur-de-Roy, and Nathan drove the police to despair and tired out the tribunals. The periods of imprisonment to which the Nathans, father, mother, brothers, and sons-in-law, altogether fourteen persons, were condemned, represent a total of 209 years.”