One of them runs that a great officer of State wrote him from Vienna begging that a noted Austrian robber who had taken refuge in Paris might be arrested and handed over. De Sartines immediately replied that it was quite a mistake, the man wanted was not in Paris, but actually in Vienna; he gave his exact address, the hours at which he went in and out of his house, and the disguises he usually assumed. The information was absolutely correct, and led to the robber's arrest. Again, one of de Sartines' friends, the president of the High Court at Lyons, ventured to deride his processes, declaring that they were of no avail, and that anyone, if so disposed, could elude the police. He offered a wager, which de Sartines accepted, that he could come into Paris and conceal himself there for several days without the knowledge of the police. A month later this judge left Lyons secretly, travelled to Paris day and night, and on arrival took up his quarters in a remote part of the city. By noon that day he received a letter, delivered at his address, from de Sartines, who invited him to dinner and claimed payment of the wager. A great _coup_ was made by this adroit officer, but the interest of the affair attaches rather to the thieves than to the police. It was on the occasion of the marriage of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette in 1770. During the great fêtes in honour of the event an extraordinary tumult arose in the Rue Royale, where it joins the modern Champs Élysées. A gang of desperadoes had cunningly stretched cords across the street under cover of the darkness, and the crowds moving out to the fêtes fell over them in hundreds. The confusion soon grew general, and a frightful catastrophe ensued. Men, women, and children, horses and carriages, were mixed up in an inextricable tangle, and hundreds were trampled to death. Some desperate men tried to hack out a passage with their swords, children were passed from hand to hand over the heads of the [Illustration: TUMULT CAUSED BY THIEVES AT THE MARRIAGE FESTIVITIES OF MARIE ANTOINETTE.] crowd, too often to fall and be swallowed up in the struggling gulf below. No fewer than 2,470 people are said to have perished in this horrible _mêlée_. It was, of course, a time of harvest for the thieves. Apparently only one of the confraternity suffered from the crush, and on him fifty watches were found and as many chains, gold and silver. Next day de Sartines and his agents made wholesale arrests. Some three or four hundred noted thieves were taken up and sent to the Conciergerie, where they were strictly searched. Large quantities of valuables were secured--watches, bracelets, rings, collars, purses, all kinds of jewels. One robber alone had two thousand francs tied up in his handkerchief.