But the great object which the police sought to obtain, and in which it was utterly foiled, was the suppression of a periodical publication which bore the title of Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques. This obnoxious work was vigorously continued for more than twenty years, without the government being able to lay hands on the writers, or to stop the printing and distributing of it. Many persons were, indeed, committed to the Bastile and other prisons, on suspicion of being its editors or contributors, but no positive proof could ever be procured. The police were wholly at fault; and the authors of the paper appear to have taken a provoking pleasure in showing the lieutenant of police their contempt of his efforts. In one instance, while his satellites were fruitlessly searching a house which was suspected of being the printing-office, a bundle of the papers, wet from the press, was thrown into his carriage almost before his face. The paper was sometimes printed in the city, and sometimes in the neighbourhood. At one time the press was secreted even under the dome of the Luxembourg; at another, it was hidden among piles of timber, and the printers were disguised as sawyers; on other occasions, it was contained in a boat on the Seine. When the paper was printed in the vicinity of Paris, various artifices were resorted to for smuggling it into the town, one of which deserves especial notice. Water-dogs were trained as carriers; they were closely shorn, the papers were wrapped round them, a large rough skin was then sewn carefully over the whole, and the sagacious animals then took their way, unsuspected, to their several destinations.