ABSTRACT
F O R more than two years x Dubosq and his inseparable Claudine had remained undiscovered. To high-class criminals living by exceptionally competent wits, it mattered little how much the Directory mismanaged the internal administration or the foreign policy of France. The police remained as casual as ever, and the prisons as leaky. This was the golden age of highway robbery in France, the time of the Compagnons de Jehu, who ' rode so furiously \ To do them justice, they were much more addicted to simple loot than to politics. I do not fancy that Dubosq was much on the roads ; he was more a specialist in burglary and inside work than on open-air violence. He was an organizer, with many criminal threads in his hands, and obviously he was seldom betrayed, having a stiff moral (or rather immoral) influence over his admiring satellites. When his last lair was discovered it was full of burglar's tools, wigs, c make up ' and clothing, rather than of lethal weapons. One thing is clear-that he lived comfortably if precariously, and always (as of yore) had money in his pockets.
