“Oh, madame!” he exclaimed, “do you think I could eat on a day like this, the day on which Christ was crucified!  I will take a piece of bread with me, but I shall only eat it at the inn where I intend to sleep:  I mean to fast the whole way.”

But this kind of thing was not sufficient.  He wanted an opportunity to establish a reputation for honesty on a firm basis.  Chance provided one, and he seized it immediately, although at the expense of a member of his own family.

One of his brothers, who kept a public-house at Chartres, came to see him.  Derues, under pretence of showing him the sights of Paris, which he did not know, asked his mistress to allow him to take in the brother for a few days, which she granted.  The last evening of his stay, Derues went up to his room, broke open the box which contained his clothes, turned over everything it contained, examined the clothes, and discovering two new cotton nightcaps, raised a cry which brought up the household.  His brother just then returned, and Derues called him an infamous thief, declaring that he had stolen the money for these new articles out of the shop the evening before.  His brother defended himself, protesting his innocence, and, indignant at such incomprehensible treachery, endeavoured to turn the tables by relating some of Antoine’s early misdeeds.  The latter, however, stopped him, by declaring on his honour that he had seen his brother the evening before go to the till, slip his hand in, and take out some money.  The brother was confounded and silenced by so audacious a lie; he hesitated, stammered, and was turned out of the house.  Derues worthily crowned this piece of iniquity by obliging his mistress to accept the restitution of the stolen money.  It cost him three livres, twelve sons, but the interest it brought him was the power of stealing unsuspected.  That evening he spent in prayer for the pardon of his brother’s supposed guilt.

All these schemes had succeeded, and brought him nearer to the desired goal, for not a soul in the quarter ventured to doubt the word of this saintly individual.  His fawning manners and insinuating language varied according to the people addressed.  He adapted himself to all, contradicting no one, and, while austere himself, he flattered the tastes of others.  In the various houses where he visited his conversation was serious, grave, and sententious; and, as we have seen, he could quote Scripture with the readiness of a theologian.  In the shop, when he had to deal with the lower classes, he showed himself acquainted with their modes of expression, and spoke the Billingsgate of the market-women, which he had acquired in the rue Comtesse d’Artois, treating them familiarly, and they generally addressed him as “gossip Denies.”  By his own account he easily judged the characters of the various people with whom he came in contact.