Ballmeyer had a happy childhood and youth. He did not become a criminal as so many others have done because driven to evil doing by the hard blows of poverty and misery. The son of a rich broker in the Rue Molay, he might have chosen any vocation that he desired, but his preferred calling was to lay hands upon the money of other people. At an early age, he decided to become a swindler, just as another lad might have decided to become an engineer. His debut was a stroke of genius, and the history of it is almost incredible. Ballmeyer stole a letter addressed to his father containing a considerable sum of money. Then he took the train for Lyons and from there wrote his parent as follows: “Monsieur, I am an old soldier, retired and with a medal of honor to show that I have served my country. My son, a postoffice clerk, has stolen in the mails a letter addressed to you and containing money, to pay a gambling debt. I have called the members of the family together. In a few days we shall be able to raise the sum necessary to repay you. You are a father. Have pity upon a father. Do not bring me down in sorrow and shame to my grave.” M. Ballmeyer willingly granted the petition. He is still waiting for his first remittance--or, rather, he has ceased to expect it, for the law apprised him ten years ago of the identity of the culprit. Ballmeyer, relates M. Albert Bataille, seems to have received from nature all the gifts which go to make the successful swindler: a wonderful diversity, the talent of persuading new acquaintances to believe in him, the careful attention to the smallest details, the genius for completely disguising himself (he even took the precaution along this line of having his linen marked with different initials every time that he judged it expedient to change his name). But his strongest characteristic of all was his astonishing aptitude for evasion--for coquetting with fraud, for mocking at and defying justice. This was evinced in the malignant pleasure which he took in speaking of himself at Parquet as among those who might have been guilty, knowing how little importance would be attached by the magistrate by the clues which he gave. This delight in jesting at the judges was apparent in every act of his life. While he was doing military duty, Ballmeyer stole his companion’s box and accused the captain. He committed a theft of forty thousand francs from the Maison Furet, and immediately afterward denounced M. Furet as having stolen it himself. The Furet affair remained for a long time celebrated among judicial records under the appellation of “the coup of the telephone.” Science, applied as an aid to knavery, has never given anything better. Ballmeyer appropriated a draft for six thousand livres sterling from the messenger of Messrs. Furet, brothers, who were note brokers in the Rue Poissoniere, and who allowed him desk room in their offices.