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 panic-stricken.  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 red-handed.

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 lily-livered 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 Rebati, qui a eu le traitement qu’il meritait:  ceux qui en feront autant que lui peuvent attendre le meme sort.’  Yet this was the murder that led to the hero’s own capture and death.

Du Chatelet, 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. Pacome summon Du Chtelet, 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 hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are broken on the wheel.’  Vainly did Du Chatelet protest his ignorance.  M. Pacome was resolute, and before the interview was over the robber confessed that Cartouche had given him rendezvous at nine next day.