No Police In Those Halcyon
Days; But With The Thickening Shades Of Evening Issued Forth That
Venerable Brotherhood, The City Watch.
The watch, did we say?
Where are now these dreamy wanderers of the
night, carolling forth, like the muezzin in Eastern cities, their
hourly calls, "All's well!" "Fine night!" "Bad weather!" as the case
might be - equally ready with their rattles to sound the dread alarm of
fire, or with their long batons to capture belated midnight
brawlers, that is, when they saw they had a good chance of escaping
capture themselves. Their most formidable foes were not the thieves,
but the gay Lotharios and high-fed swells of the time, returning from
late dinners, and who made it a duty, nay, a crowning glory, to thrash
the Watch! Where now are those practical jokers who made collections
of door-knockers (the house-bell was not then known), exchanged sign-
boards from shop-doors, played unconscionable tricks on the simple-
minded peasants on market-days - surreptitiously crept in at suburban
balls, in the guise of the evil one, and, by the alarm they at times
created, unwittingly helped Monsieur le Cure to frown down upon
these mundane junkettings.
One of these escapades is still remembered here. [79]
Four of these gentlemanly practical jokers, one night, habited in
black like the Prince of Darkness, drove silently through the suburbs
in a cariole drawn by two coal-black steeds, and meeting with a
well-known citizen, overcome by drink, asleep in the snow, they
silently but vigorously seized hold of him with an iron grip; a
cahot and physical pain having restored him to consciousness,
he devoutly crossed himself, and, presto!
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