The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. TitmarshThackeray, William Makepeace
General
The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Paris (France) -- Description and travel
and made him a present of a couple of his suits. Cartouche the elder,
good man, went to thank the young nobleman; but none such could be
found, and young Cartouche disdained to give any explanation of his
manner of gaining the money.
Here, again, we have to regret and remark the inadvertence of youth.
Cartouche lost a hundred louis—for what? For a pot of honey not worth a
couple of shillings. Had he fished out the pieces, and replaced the
pots and the honey, he might have been safe, and a respectable citizen
all his life after. The principal would not have dared to confess the
loss of his money, and did not, openly; but he vowed vengeance against
the stealer of his sweetmeat, and a rigid search was made. Cartouche,
as usual, was fixed upon; and in the tick of his bed, lo! there were
found a couple of empty honey-pots! From this scrape there is no
knowing how he would have escaped, had not the president himself been a
little anxious to hush the matter up; and accordingly, young Cartouche
was made to disgorge the residue of his ill-gotten gold pieces, old
Cartouche made up the deficiency, and his son was allowed to remain
unpunished—until the next time.
This, you may fancy, was not very long in coming; and though history
has not made us acquainted with the exact crime which Louis Dominic
next committed, it must have been a serious one; for Cartouche, who had
borne philosophically all the whippings and punishments which were
administered to him at college, did not dare to face that one which his
indignant father had in pickle for him. As he was coming home from
school, on the first day after his crime, when he received permission
to go abroad, one of his brothers, who was on the look-out for him, met
him at a short distance from home, and told him what was in
preparation; which so frightened this young thief, that he declined
returning home altogether, and set out upon the wide world to shift for
himself as he could.
Undoubted as his genius was, he had not arrived at the full exercise of
it, and his gains were by no means equal to his appetite. In whatever
professions he tried,—whether he joined the gipsies, which he
did,—whether he picked pockets on the Pont Neuf, which occupation
history attributes to him,—poor Cartouche was always hungry. Hungry and
ragged, he wandered from one place and profession to another, and
regretted the honey-pots at Clermont, and the comfortable soup and
bouilli at home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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