Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

MEN AND BOOKS
of M. Longnon's negatives, we shall get a clear idea
of their character and doings. Montigny and De
Cayeux are names already known ; Guy Tabary,
Petit-Jehan, Dom Nicolas, little Thibault, who was
both clerk and goldsmith, and who made picklocks
and melted plate for himself and his companions —
with these the reader has still to become acquainted.
Petit-Jehan and De Cayeux were handy fellows and
enjoyed a useful pre-eminence in honour of their
doings with the picklock. '^ JDictus des Cahyeus est
fortis operator crochetorum,' says Tabary 's interroga-
tion, " sed dictus Petit-Jehan, ejus socius, est forcius
operator.^ But the flower of the flock was little
Thibault ; it was reported that no lock could stand
before him ; he had a persuasive hand ; let us salute
capacity wherever we may find it. Perhaps the
term gang is not quite properly applied to the
persons whose fortunes we are now about to fol-
low ; rather they were independent malefactors,
socially intimate, and occasionally joining together
for some serious operation, just as modern stock-
jobbers form a syndicate for an important loan.
Nor were they at all particular to any branch of
misdoing. They did not scrupulously confine them-
selves to a single sort of theft, as I hear is com-
mon among modern thieves. They were ready
for anything, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter.
Montigny, for instance, had neglected neither of
these extremes, and we find him accused of cheat-
ing at games of hazard on the one hand, and on the
other of the murder of one Thevenin Pensete in a
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