Perhaps she succeeds, and he accosts her. She will lead him on to some quiet street, where they stand conversing. Now she professes virtue and modesty, and while the gentleman is conversing with her she robs him of all he has. Her stick up to this time has kept out of the gentleman’s observation. The woman gives the man the signal that she has secured the plunder; the stick then rushes up and commences abusing the gentleman—perhaps knocks his hat over his eyes, accuses him of unlawful conversation with his wife, and threatens to fetch a policeman. By this ruse the gentleman is alarmed, and will part with all he has got, rather than be dragged ignominiously to a police-court. Perhaps they will follow the gentleman home, demand his name and address, and hold the threat of an action over his head as long as they can get a sixpence from him. When family-men occupying respectable positions in society are caught in this net, they will pay almost anything to escape exposure. Those who so far forget what is due to decorum as to converse with strange women in the streets are often obliged to pay very dearly for their indiscretion. These “picking-up molls” are quite a separate class from the “pretty horsebreakers,” and the stick, or man who accompanies them, is a different class of thief from either the “bug-hunter or bloke;” the former making it his business to rob drunken men, and the latter (the bloke) snatches in a violent manner watches, parcels, or baskets, and clumsily runs for his safety. “Bug-hunters and snatchers” are few in number compared with “sticks.”
The robberies effected on Sundays, and generally in church hours, are of two sorts: the first is accomplished by making love to the servant-girls. One of the better-looking young thieves will begin courting one of the servant-maids at some house which has been marked by the thieves for plunder; and this courting will sometimes be continued for two or three months before the thieves can succeed. They generally get the servants out for a walk, or the courting is going on in one room while the thief’s companions are rifling the other rooms, the suitor making the kitchen-lady presents of finery, to keep her “sweet.” Some thieves had a house in hand for a long time, and at last succeeded one fine Sunday morning while the family were at church. They took all they wanted, and got clear from the house. A day or two afterwards an account of the housebreaking appeared in the papers, to the effect that when the family returned from church the servant-girl was found bleeding and insensible. When she came to herself she informed them that some naughty men broke into the back-yard, and when she told them to go away, they carried her into the house, where they struck her to the ground, and she could remember nothing afterwards. At this newspaper report the thieves were very angry, for they said it was untrue. They declared that Satan entered into her and told her what to say, for they never hurt her, but that she, finding herself in a mess, made her own nose bleed, to save herself with her mistress. Servants should beware, for there are always thieves ready to make love to them; and when they have got what they want, “my lady” of the kitchen sees her love no more. So
Ladies all, beware of your knights,
For they love and they ride away.
The other kind of Sunday robbery is called “sounding.” The thieves knock at doors during church hours; if nobody answers, they know that nobody is in. Should any one answer the door, the thief asks for a glass of water, or would they be kind enough to tell him in what part of the street Mr. So-and-so lives? But we must not omit to say that houses are frequently watched for several Sundays together; and when the habits of the inmates are ascertained, the thieves take their measures accordingly.
TRAGEDY OR FARCE?
Great and popular authors have much to answer for. Who, on reading “As You Like It,” has not longed to throw aside his ledger, brief, or stethoscope and note-book, and go and lead a merry life in the forest? I should have taken a through ticket to Paris, and so to Ardennes, long ago, but that, being a nervous man, I have a constitutional dread of lions and lionesses (with udders all drawn dry, the latter are too much for me altogether), and no amount of gilding would ever reconcile me to a snake. Werter, they say, was the cause of many suicides; and Mr. Carlyle has had to enter into an argument to show that Schiller’s “Robbers” did not drive a German nobleman to imitate the extremely questionable feats of its hero.
But for the strange behaviour of Mademoiselle Angélique Delaporte, we sadly fear that Mrs. Radcliffe, or some kindred genius, must be held answerable. The story we are about to relate of the eccentricities of this young lady is so very like those thrilling romances, No. 2 of which (in a highly ornamented cover) is presented gratis with No. 1, that it may be as well to assure our readers that we are going to narrate an actual occurrence.
One fine morning in October, 1811, a little party set out for an excursion to the suburbs of Paris, from the Rue de Bondy. It consisted of Madame Morin, a widow of about forty, buxom, weak-headed, active, always engaged in some speculation or another; a girl of about sixteen, with her head full of romances, Angélique Delaporte, the daughter of Madame Morin by her first husband, from whom she had been divorced; and lastly, Mr. Ragouleau, a shrewd, hard lawyer, whose numerous dealings with the widow in her house speculations had by no means turned out ill for him.
Ragouleau had had an invitation to breakfast from the widow for some time past; it had been put off, but now here he was. Strangely enough, however, he refuses breakfast, but the widow insists on his going with her and her daughter to see a country-house she is thinking of buying, and of which she wants his opinion. The man of business consents; a cab is called, and they all three get in. “By the barrier of Rochechouart,