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.
III--A PARALLEL
(SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE)
IF the seventeenth century was the golden age of the hightobyman, it was
at the advent of the eighteenth that the burglar and street-robber plied
their trade with the most distinguished success, and it was the good
fortune of both Cartouche and Sheppard to be born in the nick of time.
Rivals in talent, they were also near contemporaries, and the Scourge of
Paris may well have been famous in the purlieus of Clare Market before
Jack the Slip-String paid the last penalty of his crimes. As each of
these great men harboured a similar ambition, so their careers are
closely parallel. Born in a humble rank of life, Jack, like Cartouche,
was the architect of his own fortune; Jack, like Cartouche, lived to be
flattered by noble dames and to claim the solicitude of his Sovereign;
and each owed his pre-eminence rather to natural genius than to a
sympathetic training.
But, for all the Briton's artistry, the Frenchman was in all points save
one the superior. Sheppard's brain carried him not beyond the wants of
to-day and the extortions of Poll Maggot.
Who knows but he might have been a respectable citizen, with never a
chance for the display of his peculiar talent, had not hunger and his
mistress's greed driven him upon the pad? History records no brilliant
robbery of his own planning, and so circumscribed was his imagination
that he must needs pick out his own friends and benefactors for
depredation.
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