M. Canler, afterwards chief of the detective police, tells an amusing story in his Memoirs of how Vidocq was fooled by one of his precious assistants. In choosing between candidates, the old thief sought the boldest and most impudent. One day a man he did not know, Jacquin, offered himself, and Vidocq, to try him, sent him to buy a couple of fowls in the market. Jacquin presently brought back the fowls and also the ten francs Vidocq had given him to pay for them. He was asked how he had managed. It was simple enough. He had gone into the market carrying a heavy hod on his shoulder, and, when he had bargained for the fowls, he asked the market woman to place them for him on the top of the stones on the hod. While she obliged him, he picked her pocket of the ten francs he had paid her. Jacquin acted the whole affair before Vidocq, whom he treated just as he had treated the owner of the fowls. When the _séance_ was over, he had robbed Vidocq of his gold watch and chain. After ten years of active work Vidocq resigned his post. He was at cross purposes, it was said, with his superiors; M. Delavau, the new prefect, had no sympathy with him, and was so much under priestly influence as to abhor Vidocq, who perhaps foresaw that he had better withdraw before he was dismissed. But the real reason was that he had feathered his nest well, and was in possession of sufficient capital to start an industrial enterprise--the manufacture of paper boxes. To this he presently added a _bureau de renseignements_, the forerunner of our modern private inquiry office, for which, from his abundant and varied experience, he was peculiarly well fitted. He soon possessed a wide _clientèle_, and had as many as 8,000 cases registered in his office. At the same time his brain was busy with practical inventions, such as a burglar-proof door and a safety paper--one that could not be imitated and used for false documents. His private inquiry business prospered greatly, but got him into serious trouble. There seems to have been no reason to charge him with dishonesty, yet he was arrested for fraud and "abuse of confidence" in some two hundred instances; he was mixed up in some shady transactions, among them money-lending and bill-discounting. He was also accused of tampering with certain employees in the War Office, and his papers were seized by the police. Some idea of the extent of his business may be gathered from the description of his offices, which were extensive, sumptuously furnished, and organised into first, second, and third divisions, like a great department of State, each served by a large staff of clerks. A little groom in livery, with buttons bearing Vidocq's monogram, ushered the visitor into his private cabinet, where the great "Intermediary," as he called himself, sat at his desk, surrounded by fine pictures (for one of which, it was said, he had refused £2,800) and many other signs of luxury and good taste.