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 Chatelet; 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 Chatelet.  ‘No,’ replied Savard.  ‘Are the four women upstairs?’ asked Du Chatelet 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 light-hearted 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 chains—­which he called his garters—­he 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.

Then came a period of splendid notoriety:  he held his court, he gave an easy rein to his wit, he received duchesses and princes with an air of amiable patronage.  Few there were of his visitants who left him without a present of gold, and thus the universal robber was further rewarded by his victims.  His portrait hung in every house, and his thin, hard face, his dry, small features were at last familiar to the