Derues arrived in Paris in 1760. It was a new horizon, where he was
unknown; no suspicion attached to him, and he felt much at his ease. Lost
in the noise and the crowd of this immense receptacle for every vice, he
had time to found on hypocrisy his reputation as an honest man. When his
apprenticeship expired, his master proposed to place him with his
sister-in-law, who kept a similar establishment in the rue St. Victor,
and who had been a widow for several years. He recommended Derues as a
young man whose zeal and intelligence might be useful in her business,
being ignorant of various embezzlements committed by his late apprentice,
who was always clever enough to cast suspicion on others. But the
negotiation nearly fell through, because, one day, Derues so far forgot
his usual prudence and dissimulation as to allow himself to make the
observation recorded above to his mistress. She, horrified, ordered him
to be silent, and threatened to ask her husband to dismiss him. It
required a double amount of hypocrisy to remove this unfavourable
impression; but he spared no pains to obtain the confidence of the
sister-in-law, who was much influenced in his favour. Every day he
inquired what could be done for her, every evening he took a basket-load
of the goods she required from the rue Comtesse d'Artois; and it excited
the pity of all beholders to see this weakly young man, panting and
sweating under his heavy burden, refusing any reward, and labouring
merely for the pleasure of obliging, and from natural kindness of heart!
The poor widow, whose spoils he was already coveting, was completely
duped. She rejected the advice of her brother-in-law, and only listened
to the concert of praises sung by neighbours much edified by Derues'
conduct, and touched by the interest he appeared to show her. Often he
found occasion to speak of her, always with the liveliest expressions of
boundless devotion. These remarks were repeated to the good woman, and
seemed all the more sincere to her as they appeared to have been made