Therefore he armed his band with loaded
staves, which sent their enemies into a noiseless and fatal sleep.
Thus was he wont to laugh at the police, deeming capture a plain
impossibility. The traitor, in sooth, was his single, irremediable fear,
and if ever suspicion was aroused against a member of the gang, that
member was put to death with the shortest shrift.

It happened in the last year of Cartouche's supremacy that a
lily-livered comrade fell in love with a pretty dressmaker. The
indiscretion was the less pardonable since the dressmaker had a horror
of theft, and impudently tried to turn her lover from his trade.
Cartouche, discovering the backslider, resolved upon a public
exhibition. Before the assembled band he charged the miscreant
with treason, and, cutting his throat, disfigured his face beyond
recognition. Thereafter he pinned to the corse the following
inscription, that others might be warned by so monstrous an example:
'Ci git Jean Rebati, qui a eu le traitement qu'il meritait: ceux qui en
feront autant que lui peuvent attendre le meme sort.' Yet this was the
murder that led to the hero's own capture and death.

Du Chatelet, another craven, had already aroused the suspicions of
his landlady: who, finding him something troubled the day after the
traitor's death, and detecting a spot of blood on his neckerchief,
questioned him closely. The coward fumbling at an answer, she was
presently convinced of his guilt, and forthwith denounced him for a
member of the gang to M. Pacome, an officer of the Guard. Straightly did
M. Pacome summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude,
bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend,' said he, 'I know you for
an associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine.
Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are
broken on the wheel.' Vainly did Du Chatelet protest his ignorance.
M. Pacome was resolute, and before the interview was over the robber
confessed that Cartouche had given him rendezvous at nine next day.

In the grey morning thirty soldiers crept forth guided by the traitor,
'en habits de bourgeois et de chasseur,' for the house where Cartouche
had lain. It was an inn, kept by one Savard, near la Haulte Borne de la
Courtille; and the soldiers, though they lacked not numbers, approached
the chieftain's lair shaking with terror. In front marched Du Chatelet;
the rest followed in Indian file, ten paces apart. When the t