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No word of
confession crossed his lips, and he...
Posted on Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 8:29 AM
No word of
confession crossed his lips, and he would still entertain the officers of the
law with joke and epigram
Thus he won over a handful of the Guard, and, begging for solitude, he
straightway set about escape with a courage and an address which Jack
Sheppard might have envied His delicate ear discovered that a cellar lay
beneath his cell; and with the old nail which lies on the floor of every
prison he made his way downwards into a boxmaker's shop But a
barking dog spoiled the enterprise: the boxmaker and his daughter were
immediately abroad, and once more Cartouche was lodged in prison,
weighted with still heavier garters
Then came a period of splendid notoriety: he held his court, he gave an
easy rein to his wit, he received duchesses and princes with an air of
A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS
amiable patronage Few there were of his visitants who left him without
a present of gold, and thus the universal robber was further rewarded by
his victims His portrait hung in every house, and his thin, hard face, his
dry, small features were at last familiar to the whole of France
Grandval made him the hero of an epic--`Le Vice Puni' Even the theatre
was dominated by his presence; and while Arlequin- Cartouche was
greeted with thunders of applause at the Italiens, the more serious
Franais set Cartouche upon the stage in three acts, and lavished upon
its theme the resources of a then intelligent artLe Grand, author of
the tiffany style necklace piece, deigned to call upon the king of thieves, spoke some words of
argot with him, and by way of conscience money gave him a hundred
crowns
Cartouche set little store by such patronage He pocketed the crowns,
and then put an end to the comedy by threatening that if it were played
again the companions of Cartouche would punish all such miscreants as
dared to make him a laughing stock For Cartouche would endure
ridicule at no man's hand At the very instant of his arrest, all bare-footed
as he was, he kicked a constable who presumed to smile at his
discomfiture His last days were spent in resolute abandonment True,
he once attempted to beat out his brains with the fetters that bound him;
true, also, he took a poison that had been secretly conveyed within the
prison But both attempts failed, and, more scrupulously watched, he had
no other course than jollity Lawyers and priests he visited with a like
and bitter scorn, and when, on November 27, 1721, he was led to the
scaffold, not a word of confession or contrition had been dragged from
him
To the last moment he cherished the hope of rescue, and eagerly he
scanned the crowd for the faces of his comrades But the gang, trusting
to its leader's nobility, had broken its oath With contemptuous dignity
Cartouche determined upon revenge: proudly he turned to the priest,
begging a respite and the opportunity of speech Forgotten by his friends,
he resolved to spare no single soul: he betrayed even his mistresses to
justice cheap chanel purse
Of his gang, forty were in the service of Mllede Montpensier, who
A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS
was already in Spain; while two obeyed the Duchesse de Ventadour as
valets-de-pied His confession, in brief, was so dangerous a document, it
betrayed the friends and servants of so many great houses, that the officers
of the Law found safety for their patrons in its destruction, and not a line
of the hero's testimony remains The trial of his comrades dragged on for
many a year, and after Cartouche had been cruelly broken on the wheel,
not a few of the gang, of which he had been at once the terror and
inspiration, suffered a like fate Such the career and such the fitting end
of the most distinguished marauder the world has known Thackeray,
with no better guide than a chap-book, was minded to belittle him, now
habiting him like a scullion, now sending him forth on some petty errand
of cly-faking But for all Thackeray's contempt his fame is still
undimmed, and he has left the reputation of one who, as thief unrivalled,
had scarce his equal as wit and dandy even in the days when Louis the
Magnificent was still a memory and an example
III A PARALLEL (SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE)
A PARALLEL (SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE)
IF the seventeenth century was the golden age of the hightobyman, it
was at the advent of the eighteenth that the burglar and street-robber plied
their trade with the most distinguished knockoff gucci handbags success, and it was the good
fortune of both Cartouche and Sheppard to be born in the nick of time
Rivals in talent, they were also near contemporaries, and the Scourge of
Paris may well have been famous in the purlieus of Clare Market before
Jack the Slip-String paid the last penalty of his crimes As each of these
great men harboured a similar ambition, so their careers are closely
parallel Born in a humble rank of life, Jack, like Cartouche, was the
architect of his own fortune; Jack, like Cartouche, lived to be flattered by
noble dames and to claim the solicitude of his Sovereign; and each owed
his pre-eminence rather to natural genius than to a sympathetic training
But, for all the Briton's artistry, the Frenchman was in all points save
one the superior Sheppard's brain carried him not beyond the wants of
to-day and the extortions of Poll Maggot
A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS
Who knows but he might have been a respectable citizen, with never a
chance for the display of his peculiar talent, had not hunger and his
mistress's greed driven him upon the pad? History records no brilliant
robbery of his own planning, and so circumscribed was his imagination
that he must needs pick out his own friends and benefactors for
depredation His paltry sense of discipline permitted him to be betrayed
even by his brother and pupil, and there was no cracksman of his time
over whose head he held the rod of terror Even his hatred of Jonathan
Wild was the result not of policy but louis vuitton back pack of prejudice Cartouche, on the
other hand, was always perfect when at work The master of himself, he
was also the master of his fellows There was no detail of civil war that
he had not made his own, and he still remains, after nearly two centuries,
the greatest captain the world has seen Never did he permit an
enterprise to fail by accident; never was he impelled by hunger or
improvidence to fight a battle unprepared His means were always neatly
fitted to their end, as is proved by the truth that, throughout his career, he
was arrested but once, and then not by his own inadvertence but by the
treachery of others
Yet from the moment of arrest Jack Sheppard asserted his magnificent
superiority If Cartouche was a sorry bungler at prison-breaking,
Sheppard was unmatched in this dangerous art The sport of the one was
to break in, of the other to break out True, the Briton proved his
inferiority by too frequently placing himself under lock and key; but you
will forgive his every weakness for the unexampled skill wherewith he
extricated himself from the stubbornest dungeon Cartouche would
scarce have given Sheppard a menial's office in his gang How cordially
Sheppard would have despised Cartouche's solitary experiment in escape!
To be foiled by a dog and a boxmaker's daughter! Would not that have
seemed contemptible to the master breaker of those unnumbered doors and
walls which separate the Castle from the freedom of Newgate roof?
Such, then, is the contrast between the heroes Sheppard claims our
admiration for one chanel knockoff masterpiec
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