Of all the heroes who have waged a private and undeclared war upon their neighbours, Louis-Dominique Cartouche was the most generously endowed. It was but his resolute contempt for politics, his unswerving love of plunder for its own sake, that prevented him from seizing a throne or questing after the empire of the world. The modesty of his ambition sets him below CÆsar, or Napoleon, but he yields to neither in the genius of success: whatever he would attain was his on the instant, nor did failure interrupt his career, until treachery, of which he went in perpetual terror, involved himself and his comrades in ruin. His talent of generalship was unrivalled. None of the gang was permitted the liberty of a free-lance. By Cartouche was the order given, and so long as the chief was in repose, Paris might enjoy her sleep. When it pleased him to join battle a whistle was enough.

Now, it was revealed to his intelligence that the professional thief, who devoted all his days and such of his nights as were spared from depredation to wine and women, was more readily detected than the valet-de-chambre, who did but crack a crib or cry 'Stand and deliver!' on a proper occasion. Wherefore, he bade his soldiers take service in the great houses of Paris, that, secure of suspicion, they might still be ready to obey the call of duty. Thus, also, they formed a reconnoitring force, whose vigilance no prize might elude; and nowhere did Cartouche display his genius to finer purpose than in this prudent disposition of his army. It remained only to efface himself, and therein he succeeded admirably by never sleeping two following nights in the same house: so that, when Cartouche was the terror of Paris, when even the King trembled in his bed, none knew his stature nor could recognise his features. In this shifting and impersonal vizard, he broke houses, picked pockets, robbed on the pad. One night he would terrify the Faubourg St. Germain; another he would plunder the humbler suburb of St. Antoine; but on each excursion he was companioned by experts, and the map of Paris was rigidly apportioned among his followers. To each district a captain was appointed, whose business it was to apprehend the customs of the quarter, and thus to indicate the proper season of attack.

Ever triumphant, with yellow-boys ever jingling in his pocket, Cartouche lived a life of luxurious merriment. A favourite haunt was a cabaret in the Rue Dauphine, chosen for the sanest of reasons, as his Captain Ferrand declared, that the landlady was a femme d'esprit. Here he would sit with his friends and his women, and thereafter drive his chariot across the Pont Neuf to the sunnier gaiety of the Palais-Royal. A finished dandy, he wore by preference a grey-white coat with silver buttons; his breeches and stockings were on a famous occasion of black silk; while a sword, scabbarded in satin, hung at his hip.

But if Cartouche, like many another great man, had the faculty of enjoyment, if he loved wine and wit, and mistresses handsomely attired in damask, he did not therefore neglect his art. When once the gang was perfectly ordered, murder followed robbery with so instant a frequency that Paris was panic-stricken. A cry of 'Cartouche' straightway ensured an empty street. The King took counsel with his ministers: munificent rewards were offered, without effect. The thief was still at work in all security, and it was a pretty irony which urged him to strip and kill on the highway one of the King's own pages. Also, he did his work with so astonishing a silence, with so reasoned a certainty, that it seemed impossible to take him or his minions red-handed.

Before all, he discouraged the use of firearms. 'A pistol,' his philosophy urged, 'is an excellent weapon in an emergency, but reserve it for emergencies. At close quarters it is none too sure; and why give the alarm against yourself?' Therefore he armed his band with loaded staves, which sent their enemies into a noiseless and fatal sleep. Thus was he wont to laugh at the police, deeming capture a plain impossibility. The traitor, in sooth, was his single, irremediable fear, and if ever suspicion was aroused against a member of the gang, that member was put to death with the shortest shrift.

It happened in the last year of Cartouche's supremacy that a lily-livered comrade fell in love with a pretty dressmaker. The indiscretion was the less pardonable since the dressmaker had a horror of theft, and impudently tried to turn her lover from his trade. Cartouche, discovering the backslider, resolved upon a public exhibition. Before the assembled band he charged the miscreant with treason, and, cutting his throat, disfigured his face beyond recognition. Thereafter he pinned to the corse the following inscription, that others might be warned by so monstrous an example: 'Ci git Jean RebÂti, qui a eu le traitement qu'il mÉritait: ceux qui en feront autant que lui peuvent attendre le mÊme sort.' Yet this was the murder that led to the hero's own capture and death.

Du ChÂtelet, another craven, had already aroused the suspicions of his landlady: who, finding him something troubled the day after the traitor's death, and detecting a spot of blood on his neckerchief, questioned him closely. The coward fumbling at an answer, she was presently convinced of his guilt, and forthwith denounced him for a member of the gang to M. Pacome, an officer of the Guard. Straightly did M. PacÔme summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude, bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend,' said he, 'I know you for an associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine. Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are broken on the wheel.' Vainly did Du ChÂtelet protest his ignorance. M. PacÔme was resolute, and before the interview was over the robber confessed that Cartouche had given him rendezvous at nine next day.

In the grey morning thirty soldiers crept forth guided by the traitor, 'en habits de bourgeois et de chasseur,' for the house where Cartouche had lain. It was an inn, kept by one Savard, near la Haulte Borne de la Courtille; and the soldiers, though they lacked not numbers, approached the chieftain's lair shaking with terror. In front marched Du ChÂtelet; the rest followed in Indian file, ten paces apart. When the traitor reached the house, Savard recognised him for a friend, and entertained him with familiar speech. 'Is there anybody upstairs?' demanded Du ChÂtelet. 'No,' replied Savard. 'Are the four women upstairs?' asked Du ChÂtelet again. 'Yes, they are,' came the answer: for Savard knew the password of the day. Instantly the soldiers filled the tavern, and, mounting the staircase, discovered Cartouche with his three lieutenants, Balagny, Limousin, and Blanchard. One of the four still lay abed; but Cartouche, with all the dandy's respect for his clothes, was mending his breeches. The others hugged a flagon of wine over the fire.

So fell the scourge of Paris into the grip of justice. But once under lock and key, he displayed all the qualities which made him supreme. His gaiety broke forth into a light-hearted contempt of his gaolers, and the Lieutenant Criminel, who would interrogate him, was covered with ridicule. Not for an instant did he bow to fate: all shackled as he was, his legs engarlanded in heavy chains—which he called his garters—he tempered his merriment with the meditation of escape. From the first he denied all knowledge of Cartouche, insisting that his name was Charles Bourguignon, and demanding burgundy, that he might drink to his country and thus prove him a true son of the soil. Not even the presence of his mother and brother abashed him. He laughed them away as impostors, hired by a false justice to accuse and to betray the innocent. No word of confession crossed his lips, and he would still entertain the officers of the law with joke and epigram.

Thus he won over a handful of the Guard, and, begging for solitude, he straightway set about escape with a courage and an address which Jack Sheppard might have envied. His delicate ear discovered that a cellar lay beneath his cell; and with the old nail which lies on the floor of every prison he made his way downwards into a boxmaker's shop. But a barking dog spoiled the enterprise: the boxmaker and his daughter were immediately abroad, and once more Cartouche was lodged in prison, weighted with still heavier garters.

Then came a period of splendid notoriety: he held his court, he gave an easy rein to his wit, he received duchesses and princes with an air of amiable patronage. Few there were of his visitants who left him without a present of gold, and thus the universal robber was further rewarded by his victims. His portrait hung in every house, and his thin, hard face, his dry, small features were at last familiar to the whole of France. M. Grandval made him the hero of an epic—'Le Vice Puni.' Even the theatre was dominated by his presence; and while Arlequin-Cartouche was greeted with thunders of applause at the Italiens, the more serious FranÇais set Cartouche upon the stage in three acts, and lavished upon its theme the resources of a then intelligent art. M. Le Grand, author of the piece, deigned to call upon the king of thieves, spoke some words of argot with him, and by way of conscience money gave him a hundred crowns.

Cartouche set little store by such patronage. He pocketed the crowns, and then put an end to the comedy by threatening that if it were played again the companions of Cartouche would punish all such miscreants as dared to make him a laughing stock. For Cartouche would endure ridicule at no man's hand. At the very instant of his arrest, all bare-footed as he was, he kicked a constable who presumed to smile at his discomfiture. His last days were spent in resolute abandonment. True, he once attempted to beat out his brains with the fetters that bound him; true, also, he took a poison that had been secretly conveyed within the prison. But both attempts failed, and, more scrupulously watched, he had no other course than jollity. Lawyers and priests he visited with a like and bitter scorn, and when, on November 27, 1721, he was led to the scaffold, not a word of confession or contrition had been dragged from him.

To the last moment he cherished the hope of rescue, and eagerly he scanned the crowd for the faces of his comrades. But the gang, trusting to its leader's nobility, had broken its oath. With contemptuous dignity Cartouche determined upon revenge: proudly he turned to the priest, begging a respite and the opportunity of speech. Forgotten by his friends, he resolved to spare no single soul: he betrayed even his mistresses to justice.

Of his gang, forty were in the service of Mlle. de Montpensier, who was already in Spain; while two obeyed the Duchesse de Ventadour as valets-de-pied. His confession, in brief, was so dangerous a document, it betrayed the friends and servants of so many great houses, that the officers of the Law found safety for their patrons in its destruction, and not a line of the hero's testimony remains. The trial of his comrades dragged on for many a year, and after Cartouche had been cruelly broken on the wheel, not a few of the gang, of which he had been at once the terror and inspiration, suffered a like fate. Such the career and such the fitting end of the most distinguished marauder the world has known. Thackeray, with no better guide than a chap-book, was minded to belittle him, now habiting him like a scullion, now sending him forth on some petty errand of cly-faking. But for all Thackeray's contempt his fame is still undimmed, and he has left the reputation of one who, as thief unrivalled, had scarce his equal as wit and dandy even in the days when Louis the Magnificent was still a memory and an example.