Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [33]
In addition to discarding identities, Vidocq left behind a trail of admiring women wherever he went. One of the conquests he describes in his Memoirs:
At dark the evening of our departure, I met a woman from Brussels, named Elisa, with whom I had been intimate. She fell on my neck, took me to supper, and, overcoming weak resistance, kept me with her till the next morning. I pretended to Francine [another lover], who had sought me everywhere, that to throw the police off my tracks I had been forced to dash into a house, and I could not get out until daylight. At first she believed me; but chance led her to discover that I had passed the night with a woman.… In her excess of rage she swore that she would have me arrested. Having me put in prison was certainly the safest way to assure herself against my infidelities. As Francine was a woman to do what she said she would, I deemed it prudent to leave her until her anger had cooled. 6
Vidocq’s many stints in prison, as well as his frequent escapes, had earned him a reputation among criminals. This helped him to find refuge with lawless elements whenever he was out of prison, but it also meant that his only means of earning a living was through crime. Wishing to turn his life around, he managed to arrange a meeting with a man named Dubois, the commissaire of police in Lyons. Vidocq proposed to give him a list of criminals working in the area in return for his freedom. Dubois, who knew of Vidocq’s reputation, was hesitant, fearing a trick. To prove his good faith, Vidocq said he would give the slip to the two gendarmes who were waiting to take him to prison, and voluntarily return to Dubois’s office. Dubois agreed. Not long after Vidocq left, the door opened and he stood there again — without the guards.
Thus began Vidocq’s double career: as criminal and police informer. He was forced to leave Lyons to save his skin when the criminals who were being rounded up suspected he had betrayed them. He returned to Arras, where his mother still lived, but was unable to convince the police there that he had gone straight. His good intentions rebuffed, he returned to crime again and wound up in Paris, where he developed a relationship with a woman named Annette, whom he later married.
Paris in the early nineteenth century was not the City of Light it would later become. It was a city of narrow, maze-like streets that were dark and dangerous, twisted alleys and dead ends where bodies were dumped. There were no spacious boulevards or parks with gas lighting. The metropolis was a hotbed of vice and disease. Hordes of people lived in ramshackle ancient buildings; epidemics of cholera periodically swept the city. In this world, the poor were forced to steal for their bread, and street urchins needed sharp wits to survive.
In 1809, during Napoleon’s rule, Vidocq decided once again to make a break with his criminal past. He sent a letter to “Papa” Henry, divisional chief of the Police Prefecture of Paris, offering his services as a spy in the underworld. Henry could see the value such a man would have, and referred the letter to Baron de Pasquier, the prefect of police, who agreed to give him a chance. In his Memoirs, Vidocq referred to the two men as “my liberators.” 7 For the next two decades, he would employ his talents on the right side of the law.
At first he served as an informant in La Force Prison in Paris. The authorities had spread rumors that Vidocq had committed a particularly heinous crime. This earned him the respect of the other inmates, who “whispered and even said aloud in talking about me, ‘He’s a murderer,’ and as in that place a murderer ordinarily inspires great confidence, I was careful not to refute an error so useful to my projects.” 8 Some inmates also recognized Vidocq from having served with him in other prisons