His paltry sense of discipline permitted him to be betrayed
even by his brother and pupil, and there was no cracksman of his time
over whose head he held the rod of terror. Even his hatred of Jonathan
Wild was the result not of policy but of prejudice. Cartouche, on the
other hand, was always perfect when at work. The master of himself, he
was also the master of his fellows. There was no detail of civil war
that he had not made his own, and he still remains, after nearly two
centuries, the greatest captain the world has seen. Never did he permit
an enterprise to fail by accident; never was he impelled by hunger or
improvidence to fight a battle unprepared. His means were always neatly
fitted to their end, as is proved by the truth that, throughout his
career, he was arrested but once, and then not by his own inadvertence
but by the treachery of others.
Yet from the moment of arrest Jack Sheppard asserted his magnificent
superiority. If Cartouche was a sorry bungler at prison-breaking,
Sheppard was unmatched in this dangerous art. The sport of the one was
to break in, of the other to break out. True, the Briton proved his
inferiority by too frequently placing himself under lock and key; but
you will forgive his every weakness for the unexampled skill wherewith
he extricated himself from the stubbornest dungeon. Cartouche would
scarce have given Sheppard a menial's office in his gang. How cordially
Sheppard would have despised Cartouche's solitary experiment in escape!
To be foiled by a dog and a boxmaker's daughter! Would not that have
seemed contemptible to the master breaker of those unnumbered doors and
walls which separate the Castle from the freedom of Newgate roof?
Such, then, is the contrast between the heroes.
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