furnish commerce with the required information.
But, to say nothing of the defects peculiar to that
enterprise, and which must necessarily cause it to
miscarry, I am convinced that publicity is neither
decent nor profitable in matters of this kind. The
most useful idea remains sterile and fruitless as soon
as it degenerates into scandal.

The establishment which I have the intention of
founding will present none of these grave inconveniences,
and its utilitarian object will recommend it,
beforehand, to the favourable opinion of commerce,
until it shall have acquired a recommendation in its
services.

Under the title of Bureau de Renseignements, my
establishment will furnish, on the spot, to the
commercial gentlemen who honour it with their
confidence, positive information respecting the persons
who, without being known to them, ask for credit.

To cut short any false interpretation which might
throw alarm into real commerce, I hasten to declare
that such information will never be supplied with
regard to dealers who are really in trade, whatever
may be their solvability in other respects. The
Information Office will meddle only with false or
pretended commercial men, who make a business of
buying without paying, that is, of swindling.

For a long time past I have been ripening the
project which I now submit to the public. I am, perhaps,
the only person who can undertake and properly
fulfil the task which I propose to myself. The office
which I have filled has given me an opportunity of
becoming acquainted with swindlers and their tricks.
Since I have quitted the public service, I have
collected innumerable documents, which the
multiplicity of my occupations did not then permit me to
procure.

The whole personnel of these swindlers will be
severely kept in note. I shall have at my disposal
the list of all the individuals who, from twenty-five
to fifty years back, have been accused, detained, or
condemned for swindling.

Such is my project: I believe it to be eminently
useful to my fellow-citizens, and it is with this idea
that I undertake it.

The swindlers whose plots I wish to baffle will
make personal attacks upon me, in order to injure
my establishment. Their hatred will be my title to
the confidence of honest men.

My conduct has been severely commented (on a
beaucoup glosé sur mon compte): in general, those
who talk about me are very ignorant of what I have
done, and attribute to me things which I have not
done.

In the difficult functions which I have fulfilled, I
have never mixed myself up with the political police.
I have delivered the capital of thieves who infested
it; I now wish to deliver commerce from the
swindlers who plunder it.

The compensation which I shall require from
persons who give me their confidence is fixed at so
extremely low a rate, that it will not be felt at all
by the majority of commercial men. For twenty
francs a year I engage to furnish information on all
occasions to mercantile men who become subscribers
to my agency. Those who do not think fit to enjoy
this facility, will pay five francs for each inquiry or
consultation.

We undertake all sorts of researches and explorations
in the interest of families and of injured persons,
and of all contentious affairs, whether in France or
in foreign countries.

In this establishment will be found an office where,
under the seal of secrecy, there will be given, only to
known persons, advice suitable for their escape from
the snares of thieves and rogues of every class.

The bureaux will be open from ten in the morning
till eight in the evening. Every demand should be
made in writing, for the sake of expediting business.

None but prepaid letters and parcels are received.

The scheme took; he reckoned as many as
eight thousand subscribers; and, as he said with
pride on the occasion of his trial, in 1843, not
one of them raised his voice to complain of his
relations with him. In 1835, he published a
sort of report of the principal operations of his
agency, from the first of January to the first of
March; and he proved that, in the space of those
two months, he had helped eleven heads of
mercantile houses to recover more than sixty
thousand francs' worth of goods that had been hocus-
pocussed out of their possession.

Besides the persons who occasionally
rendered him paid or gratuitous services, Vidocq
employed not less than twenty persons, in either
sedentary or active occupations; some for
correspondence, for matters in litigation, and for
the drawing up of statements, others for
explorations, investigations, for watching persons,
and inquiries of all sorts. Unfortunately, these
underlings, of either kind, were very far from
being irreproachable in their antecedents, whilst
the actual conduct of several of them gave them
no chance of gaining the prize for good
behaviour. It was the weak side of Vidocq's
enterprise; he felt it so keenly that, as a general
rule, one half of his troop employed the greater
part of their time in watching the other half.

Besides these inferior gentry, he had a secretary
whose task was to edit and keep an eye on
the correctness of the literary department.

A young man, who had completed his term
of military service, returning to the metropolis
which claims to be the capital of the civilised
world, with thirty sous in his pocket and hope
in his bosom, read on the walls a bill advertisement
to this effect:

"Wanted, Rue Neuve-Saint-Eustache, No. 10,
at the Office of Commercial Information, an editing
secretary" (un secrétaire rédacteur)."

The adventurer hastened to solicit the vacant
employment, and found himself in the presence
of a thick-set man with blue eyes, wide open
lips, and an abundance of grisly hair. He was
breakfasting off a service of silver gilt, and kept
tossing whole sausages to a bull-dog that lay at
his feet.

"Monsieur," he said, staring at his visitor
like a gendarme who is going to ask you to
produce your passport, "do you write well from
dictation?"

"I believe so," was the modest reply.

Then, offering a quire of paper, he pronounced
the following sentences, to judge of the
candidate's capabilities:

"The party is inclined to debauch; but, profligate
and very astute, he sometimes makes use of a lead-
headed cane and a false nose. Apply to him, first,
the sack trick; then, successively, the barrel organ,
and the chimney fire."