But if Cartouche,like many another great man,had the faculty of enjoyment,if he loved wine and wit,and mistresses handsomely attired in damask,he did not therefore neglect his art.When once the gang was perfectly ordered,murder followed robbery with so instant a frequency that Paris was panicstricken.A cry of `Cartouche'straightway ensured an empty street.The King took counsel with his ministers:munificent rewards were offered,without effect.The thief was still at work in all security,and it was a pretty irony which urged him to strip and kill on the highway one of the King's own pages.Also,he did his work with so astonishing a silence,with so reasoned a certainty,that it seemed impossible to take him or his minions redhanded.
Before all,he discouraged the use of firearms.`A pistol,'his philosophy urged,`is an excellent weapon in an emergency,but reserve it for emergencies.At close quarters it is none too sure;and why give the alarm against yourself?'Therefore he armed his band with loaded staves,which sent their enemies into a noiseless and fatal sleep.Thus was he wont to laugh at the police,deeming capture a plain impossibility.The traitor,in sooth,was his single,irremediable fear,and if ever suspicion was aroused against a member of the gang,that member was put to death with the shortest shrift.
It happened in the last year of Cartouche's supremacy that a lilylivered comrade fell in love with a pretty dressmaker.The indiscretion was the less pardonable since the dressmaker had a horror of theft,and impudently tried to turn her lover from his trade.Cartouche,discovering the backslider,resolved upon a public exhibition.Before the assembled band he charged the miscreant with treason,and,cutting his throat,disfigured his face beyond recognition.Thereafter he pinned to the corse the following inscription,that others might be warned by so monstrous an example:`Ci git Jean Reb<a^>ti,qui a eu le traitement qu'il m<e'>ritait:ceux qui en feront autant que lui peuvent attendre le m<e^>me sort.'Yet this was the murder that led to the hero's own capture and death.
Du Ch<a^>telet,another craven,had already aroused the suspicions of his landlady:who,finding him something troubled the day after the traitor's death,and detecting a spot of blood on his neckerchief,questioned him closely.The coward fumbling at an answer,she was presently convinced of his guilt,and forthwith denounced him for a member of the gang to M.Pacome,an officer of the Guard.Straightly did M.Pac<o^>me summon Du Ch<a^>telet,and,assuming his guilt for certitude,bade him surrender his captain.`My friend,'said he,`I know you for an associate of Cartouche.Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine.Confess the hidingplace of Cartouche,or in twentyfour hours you are broken on the wheel.'Vainly did Du Ch<a^>telet protest his ignorance.M.Pac<o^>me was resolute,and before the interview was over the robber confessed that Cartouche had given him rendezvous at nine next day.
In the grey morning thirty soldiers crept forth guided by the traitor,`en habits de bourgeois et de chasseur,'for the house where Cartouche had lain.It was an inn,kept by one Savard,near la Haulte Borne de la Courtille;and the soldiers,though they lacked not numbers,approached the chieftain's lair shaking with terror.In front marched Du Ch<a^>telet;the rest followed in Indian file,ten paces apart.When the traitor reached the house,Savard recognised him for a friend,and entertained him with familiar speech.`Is there anybody upstairs?'demanded Du Ch<a^>telet.`No,'replied Savard.`Are the four women upstairs?'asked Du Ch<a^>telet again.`Yes,they are,'came the answer:for Savard knew the password of the day.Instantly the soldiers filled the tavern,and,mounting the staircase,discovered Cartouche with his three lieutenants,Balagny,Limousin,and Blanchard.One of the four still lay abed;but Cartouche,with all the dandy's respect for his clothes,was mending his breeches.The others hugged a flagon of wine over the fire.
So fell the scourge of Paris into the grip of justice.But once under lock and key,he displayed all the qualities which made him supreme.His gaiety broke forth into a lighthearted contempt of his gaolers,and the Lieutenant Criminel,who would interrogate him,was covered with ridicule.Not for an instant did he bow to fate:all shackled as he was,his legs engarlanded in heavy chainswhich he called his gartershe tempered his merriment with the meditation of escape.From the first he denied all knowledge of Cartouche,insisting that his name was Charles Bourguignon,and demanding burgundy,that he might drink to his country and thus prove him a true son of the soil.Not even the presence of his mother and brother abashed him.He laughed them away as impostors,hired by a false justice to accuse and to betray the innocent.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.
