Daily National Intelligencer

FRENCH HOUSE BREAKERS:
FROM A LATE LONDON PAPER.

A Paris Journalist, after announcing the trial of a band of nineteen house-breakers, remarks, that, though the multiplicity of offence, notwithstanding all the vigilance of the police, may form a just cause of regret, yet it is not calculated to excite much surprize, if it be considered that Paris is a city where 30,000 persons awake every morning without knowing how they were to procure a breakfast. But the most dangerous class of thieves were those who combined for the purpose of carrying on their depredations with the greater security and effect. By this means they executed robberies, which it would be impossible for an individual to attempt, and turned the produce of them to account without leaving any traces by which they might be discovered. They had their leaders, their laws and their organization so skilfully combined, as not even to be destroyed by the imprisonment or condemnation of those who directed the gang. From the bottom of a prison they still issued their orders, were obeyed and received a share of the plunder. Among a great number of facts, going to support this assertion, the writer mentions the following, which occurred to a Paris advocate, who had long practised in the courts of criminal justice: "The wife of this advocate, on coming out of the Feydeau theatre, perceived that a large cut had been made in the bottom of her bag, through which her purse, scent box, tooth pick case, and a small gold watch, had been softly made to drop, probably into a hat. Her husband, who had learned how to know his conge, next morning repaired to one of the prisons, where he was immediately surrounded by a tribe of clients. He told them, with much displeasure, of the robbery on his wife: "Ah! sir," said one of the leaders, "pardon the mistake: doubtless the man who played this bad joke had not the honor to know Madame. As to you, sir" addressing the advocate, "be assured that nothing shall be neglected to give you a proof of our esteem and gratitude." The advocate departed tolerably cheered by his client's promises.

Next morning a person brought a packet addressed to his wife, and containing all she had lost the evening before excepting the tooth pick case. A letter accompanying the packet requested Madame to accept the excuses of a novice, who had given her a moment's uneasiness, and to satisfy herself by a search whether she was not mistaken in stating the tooth-pick case to be one of the trinkets she had lost. In fact the lady found it afterwards in her work bag.

The writer then mentions one Delzeve, who had been brought to justice, as one of the most famous of these nocturnal depredators. The Indian jugglers, says this writer, the French jugglers, the rope dancers, the most intrepid vaulters on the slack rope, were mere novices and poltroons beside him. With one spring he used to vault to the shelf of a first story, and he could throw almost to any height a cord with a hook at the end of it, by means of which he contrived to mount. The following feat would appear a fable, if not supported by numerous witnesses, and certified by the registers of the conciergerie: the walls surrounding the court of that prison, are from 50 to 60 ft. high, and at the top are garnished with chevaux-de-frise, whose points bend downwards. Having succeeded in eluding the vigilance of his keepers, who at night fall make the prisoners turn into their rooms, Delzeve, retreating to an angle of the wall, without the aid of any instrument, supporting himself merely against the two walls, and by some inconceivable movement of his feet and elbows, mounted to the iron spikes. He seized one of them at its extremity, and balanced himself till the moment when he thought he could give himself sufficient impulsive force. Then making a spring he threw himself over the chevaux-de-frise upon the roof of an adjoining house and succeeded in making his escape.—One of his companions, less adroit, having tried the same experiment, fell, and was dashed to pieces on the pavement.

There is none of the present gang who equal Delzeve; they only resemble him in the means of escalade. Woe to those who are imprudent enough to leave their windows open during the night. They expose themselves to a visit which often costs them dear. A ladder of cords, or even a single cord with a hook at the end of it, thrown with dexterity, enables the plunderer to mount, and the chamber of the sleeper is sometimes stripped before his sleep is disturbed. To avoid the inconvenience of loading their pockets with a packet of cords, in the reconnoitres which they are liable to, and which might excite suspicion, they have devised an easy mode of opening the small niches in which the cords for suspending the lamps are enclosed. They cut them and form a ladder on the spot.

The gang who are now in the hands of justice, stand accused of having, in the course of the year, committed, or of being accomplices in, a vast number of robberies in different quarters, particularly in the Hotel de Luines, Hotel de Caraman, Seminary of St. Sulpice, Hotel Perigord, &c. An honest fripperer, in the faubourg St. Germain, received the pillage produced by the expeditions of the corps. The police had been long on the watch for these gentlemen, when one of the chiefs, failing in that fidelity which men of honor ought to maintain with each other, most shamefully refused to give to one of his associates the reward of his labor. The latter, offended at this ungentlemanly conduct, lighted the match,
and the whole mine was speedily exploded.

The train of connection which had subsisted between an infinite number of robberies committed in different quarters of Paris was then discovered, but in other respects the affair was only extraordinary for the boldness and ingenuity with which some of the depredations had been executed. At the Hotel de Caraman, for example, one of the prisoners contrived to get, under the cloud of night, even into the chamber of the Countess of Caraman, approached her bed, and, finding her asleep, took out the pins which fastened the curtains, drew them, and without awakening her ladyship, obtained possession of a very fine watch which was hanging at the head of her bed. He continued his reconnoissance in the other apartments, when, one of the servants perceiving from his chamber that there was a light in the passage, rose and discovered the robber, who, finding he was noticed, fled, and escaped.

The immense quantity of property stolen, consisting of watches, clocks, candelabras, mattrasses, bolsters, feather beds, &c. was all brought into the court, which now has somewhat the appearance of a warehouse to be let.

The first robber who underwent interrogatories is a young man, but a youth of experience, and the whole of whose attempts were master-efforts. He frankly explained how he stripped an apartment, the window of which he found open. "I carried away," said he, "some chandeliers, ear-rings, a couch bed, &c." The etcetera afforded some amusement to the assembly. Other revelations which took place seemed to afford considerable interest to certain auditors, who, for their particular instruction, never fail to attend such investigations. The robber continued to detail with a very edifying candour a number of circumstances, which some may think added nothing to his glory: but there is a manner of viewing every thing, and this worthy gentleman did not blush for his profession. He never spoke of other thieves but with respect: he always used the phrases "my club," "my colleagues." All the youths in his neighborhood, he said, were well informed of the circumstances he stated. A fine education, and excellent eulogy on the youths of that quarter!

The President asked, whether the youths he alluded to belonged to the club?

He answered. "Yes."