CHAPTER VIII.

MODERN POLICE (_continued_): PARIS.

The Spy System under the Second Empire--The Manufacture of _Dossiers_--M. Andrieux receives his own on being appointed Prefect--The Clerical Police of Paris--The _Sergents de Ville_--The Six Central Brigades--The Cabmen of Paris, and how they are kept in Order--Stories of Honest and of Dishonest Cabmen--Detectives and Spies--Newspaper Attacks upon the Police--Their General Character.

Some account of the police arrangements in two or three other capitals, and also in India, may now be given by way of contrast and comparison. The police of Paris has already been dealt with in its early beginnings, and under the First Empire. After the Bourbon Restoration, and during the days of the revived monarchy, the least valuable feature of the French police had the chief prominence. Every effort was made, by means of the police, to check opposition to the reigning power, and suppress political independence. But it was at this period that the detection of crime was undertaken for the first time as a distinct branch of police business, and it will be seen in a later chapter how Vidocq did great things, although often by dishonest agents and unworthy means. In the Second Empire the secret police over-rode everything; Napoleon III. had been a conspirator in his time, and he had an army of private spies in addition to the police of the Château, and these spies watched the regular police at a cost of some fourteen millions of francs. At the fall of the Second Empire there were half a dozen different secret police services in Paris. There was the Emperor's, already mentioned; the Empress had hers; M. Rouher, the Prime Minister, and M. Piétri, the Prefect, each had a private force, so had other great officials. Most of these agents were unknown to each other as such, and so extensive was the system of espionage that one-half of Paris was at that time said to be employed in watching the other half. This system produced the _dossiers_, the small portfolios or covers, one of which appertained to each individual, high or low,

innocent or criminal, and was carefully preserved in the archives of the Prefecture. There were thousands and thousands of these, carefully catalogued and filed for easy reference, made up of confidential and calumniating reports sent in by agents, sometimes serious charges, often the merest and most mendacious tittle-tattle. The most harmless individuals were often denounced as conspirators, and an agent, if he knew nothing positive, drew liberally on his imagination for his facts. Great numbers of these _dossiers_ were destroyed in the incendiary fires of the Commune; some of its leaders were no doubt anxious that no such records should remain. The criminal classes also rejoiced, but not for long. One of the first acts of the authorities when order was re-established was to reconstitute the criminal _dossiers_, a work of immense toil, necessitating reference to all the archives of prisons and tribunals. Within a couple of years some five million slips were got together, and the documents filled eight thousand boxes. It is to be feared that the secret police is still active in Paris, even under a free Republic; secret funds are still produced to pay agents; among all classes of society spies may be found even to-day; in drawing-rooms and in the servants' hall, at one's elbow in the theatre, among journalists, in the army, and in the best professions. That this is no exaggeration may be gathered from the fact that the _dossiers_ are still in process of manufacture. M. Andrieux, a former prefect, who has published his Reminiscences, describes how on taking office the first visitor he received was his chief clerk who, according to the regular custom, put his _dossier_ into his hands. "It bore the number 14,207," M. Andrieux tells us, "and I have it now in my library, bound, with all the gross calumnies and truculent denunciations that form the basis of such documents."

The regular police organisation, that which preserves order, checks evil-doing, and "runs in" malefactors, falls naturally and broadly into two grand divisions, the administrative and the active, the police "in the office" and the police "out of doors." The first attends to the clerical business, voluminous and incessant, for Frenchmen are the slaves of a routine which goes round and round like clockwork. There is an army of clerks in the numerous bureaus, hundreds of those patient Government employees, the _ronds de cuir_, as they are contemptuously called, because they sit for choice on round leather cushions, writing and filling in forms

for hours and hours, day after day. The active army of police out of doors, which constitutes the second half of the whole machine, is divided into two classes: that in uniform and that in plain clothes. Every visitor to Paris is familiar with the rather theatrical-looking policeman, in his short frock coat or cape, smart _képi_ cocked on one side of his head, and with a sword by his side. This _agent_, _sergent de ville_, _gardien de la paix_--he is known by all three titles--has many excellent qualities, and is, no doubt, a very useful public servant. He is almost invariably an old soldier, a sergeant who has left the army with a first-class character, honesty and sobriety being indispensable qualifications. Our own Metropolitan Police is not thus recruited: the Scotland Yard authorities rather dislike men with military antecedents, believing that army training, with its stiff and unyielding discipline, does not develop that spirit of good-humoured conciliation so noticeable in our police when dealing with the public. Something of the same kind is seen in Paris; for it is said that it takes two or three years to turn the well-disciplined old soldier into the courteous and considerate _sergent de ville_. His instructions are, however, precise; he is strictly cautioned to use every form of persuasion before proceeding to extremities, he is told to warn but not to threaten, very necessary regulations when dealing with such a highly strung, excitable population as that of Paris. The same _sergents de ville_ are stationed in the same quarter of the town, so that they become more or less intimately acquainted with their neighbours and charges. They are thus often enabled to deal with them in a friendly way; a little scolding is found more effective than intimidation, and strong measures may be avoided by tact and forbearance.

The uniformed police are not all employed in the streets and _arrondissements_. There is a large reserve composed of the six central brigades, as they are called, a very smart body of old soldiers, well drilled, well dressed, and fully equipped: armed, moreover, with rifles, with which they mount guard when employed as sentries at the doors or entrance of the Prefecture. In Paris _argot_ the men of these six central brigades are nicknamed "_vaisseaux_" (vessels), because they carry on their collars the badge of the city of Paris--an ancient ship--while the sergeants in the town districts wear only numbers: their own individual number, and that of the quarter in which they serve. These _vaisseaux_ claim to be the _élite_ of the force; they come in daily contact with the Gardes de Paris, horse and foot, a fine corps of city gendarmerie, and, as competing with them, take a particular pride in themselves. Their comrades in the quarters resent this pretension, and declare that when in contact with the people the _vaisseaux_ make bad blood by their arrogance and want of tact. The principal business of four at least of these central brigades is to be on call when required to reinforce the out-of-doors police at special times. They are ready to turn out and preserve order at fires, and will, no doubt, be the first in the fray if Paris is ever again convulsed with revolutionary troubles.

Of the two remaining central brigades, one controls public carriages, the other the Halles, that great central market by which Paris is provided with a large part of its food. The cabmen of Paris are not easily controlled, but they are probably a much rougher lot than the London drivers, and they, no doubt, need a much tighter hand. Every cab-stand is under the charge of its own policeman, who knows the men, notes their arrival and departure, and marks their general behaviour. Other police officers of the central brigades superintend the street traffic, but not so successfully as do our police; indeed, parties of the French police

have from time to time been sent to London for instruction in this difficult branch of police business, but have hardly benefited by their teaching. Parisian cabmen are forbidden to rove in search of fares, or hang about in front of cafes and at street corners, the penalty being imprisonment without the option of a fine. Indeed, a special quarter in one of the Paris prisons is known as the "cabmen's," and is often full of them. Yet the drivers are honest enough, and many curious stories are told of the self-denial shown by these hard-worked, poorly paid servants of the public. A rich Russian who had won ten thousand francs one night at his club left the whole sum behind him in a cab in which he had driven home. He was so certain that he had lost it irreparably that he returned to St. Petersburg without even inquiring whether or not it had been given up. Some time later he was again in Paris, and a friend strongly urged him at least to satisfy himself whether or not the missing money had been taken to the lost property office. He went and asked, although the limit of time allowed to claim the lost property was almost expired. "Ten thousand francs lost? Yes, there it is," and after the proper identification the money was restored to him. "What a fool that cabman must have been!" was the Russian's only remark. Again, a certain jeweller in the Palais Royal left a diamond _parure_ worth 80,000 francs (£3,200) in a cab, and the police, when he reported the loss, gave him scant hope of recovery. He did not know the number of the cabman--he had picked him up in the street, not taken him from the rank; and, worse than all, he had quarrelled with the driver, the reason why he had abruptly left the cab. The case seemed quite hopeless, yet the cabman brought back the diamonds of his own accord. The quaintest part of the story is to come. When told at the Prefecture to ask the jeweller for the substantial reward to which he was clearly entitled, he replied with intense indignation: "No, not I; he was too rude. I hope I may never see him or speak to him again."

All cabmen are not so honest, however; and now and again the fraudulent cabman gets caught. It was so in the case of a tortoiseshell fan, which was deposited under a wrong description and eventually, after the legal interval, handed over to the cabman who had found it. Soon afterwards a lady turned up to claim it, and as she described it exactly he was ordered to restore it to the lady, whose name was communicated to him. "But she has no right to it," protested the cabman. "She is a thief. I know the real owner. I have known her from the first. It is Mdlle. ----," and he named a popular actress, thus confessing his own misconduct. The actress was then summoned, and did in fact identify the fan as the one she had lost. But it was proved satisfactorily that the other lady also had lost a fan that was curiously similar.

The vicissitudes of treasure-trove might be greatly multiplied. The most curious chances happen, the strangest articles are brought to the police authorities. Everything found in the streets and highways, in omnibuses, theatres, cabs, railway stations, is forwarded to the Prefecture. In one case an immigrant who had made his fortune in Canada and carried it in his pocket, in the shape of fifty notes of ten thousand francs each (£20,000), dropped his purse as he climbed on to the outside of an omnibus. The conductor picked it up and restored it; he was rewarded with £500, and richly he deserved it for resisting so great a temptation. Beds, brooches, boots, sheets even, are brought into the Prefecture. A mummy was once among the _trouvailles_; there are umbrellas without end. Hogier Grisons, a French writer, from whom many of these incidents are taken, says that a friend of his declares that whenever he finds himself without an umbrella he goes straight to the Prefecture, describes some particular one, according to his fancy, with such and such a handle, a certain colour, and so on, when he always has the exact article handed over to him.

So much for the police in uniform. That in plain clothes, _en bourgeois_, as the French call it, is not so numerous, but it fulfils a higher, or at least a more confidential, mission. Its members are styled inspectors, not agents, and their functions fall under four principal heads. There is, first of all, the service of the _Sûreté_--in other words, of public safety--the detective department, employed entirely in the pursuit and capture of criminals, of which more anon; next comes the police, now amalgamated with the _Sûreté_, that watches over the morals of the capital in a fashion that would not be tolerated in this country, and possesses arbitrary powers under the existing laws of France; then there is the _brigade de garnis_, the police charged with the supervision of all lodging-houses, from the commonest "_sleep_-sellers' shop," as it is called, to the grandest hotels. Last of all there is the brigade for inquiries, whose business it is to act as the eyes and ears of the Prefecture--in plain English, as its spies.

There are many complaints in Paris that the police are short-handed, especially in the streets. The average is sixteen to a quarter inhabited by 30,000 to 40,000 people, so that the beats are long and the patrol work severe, especially at night, though the numbers of the _sergents de ville_ are then doubled. Some say that the streets of Paris are more unsafe in the more remote districts than those of any capital of Europe. The police are much abused, too, by the Radical and Irreconcilable Press. It is not uncommon to read in the daily papers such headlines as the following: "Crimes of the Police," "Police Thieves," "Murder by a _Sergent de Ville_"--generally gross exaggerations, of course. The truth, no doubt, is that the police of Paris, taken as a whole, are a hard-working, devoted, and generally estimable body of public servants.