bring all that he has, secretly reserves a portion, as did the celebrated disciple Ananias.
The etymology of the French verb voler is still more significant. Voler, or faire la vole (from the Latin vola, palm of the hand), means to take all the tricks in a game of ombre; so that le voleur, the robber, is the capitalist who takes all, who gets the lion’s share. Probably this verb voler had its origin in the professional slang of thieves, whence it has passed into common use, and, consequently into the phraseology of the law.
Robbery is committed in a variety of ways, which have been very cleverly distinguished and classified by legislators according to their heinousness or merit, to the end that some robbers may be honored, while others are punished.
We rob,—1. By murder on the highway; 2. Alone, or in a band; 3. By breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; 4. By abstraction; 5. By fraudulent bankruptcy; 6. By forgery of the handwriting of public officials or private individuals; 7. By manufacture of counterfeit money.
This species includes all robbers who practise their profession with no other aid than force and open fraud. Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers by land and sea,—these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus, Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville, Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes,—were brigands and robbers. The heroic character of the robber is expressed in this line from Horace, in reference to Achilles,—
“Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis,”[1]
- ↑ “My right is my lance and my buckler.” General de Brossard said, like Achilles: “I get wine, gold, and women with my lance and my buckler.”
