e mocked them when they
broke a lath over his shoulders: "There now, I am so glad; that will
cost you two farthings!"

His benefactresses' patience becoming exhausted, he left their house,
and was apprenticed to a tinman at Chartres. His master died, and an
ironmonger of the same town took him as shop-boy, and from this he
passed on to a druggist and grocer. Until now, although fifteen years
old, he had shown no preference for one trade more than another, but it
was now necessary he should choose some profession, and his share in
the family property amounted to the modest sum of three thousand five
hundred livres. His residence with this last master revealed a decided
taste, but it was only another evil instinct developing itself: the
poisoner had scented poison, being always surrounded with drugs which
were health-giving or hurtful, according to the use made of them. Derues
would probably have settled at Chartres, but repeated thefts obliged him
to leave the town. The profession of druggist and grocer being one which
presented most chances of fortune, and being, moreover, adapted to
his tastes, his family apprenticed him to a grocer in the rue Comtesse
d'Artois, paying a specified premium for him.

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 to