Excerpt from Monsieur Lecoq On February 20, 18 -, a Sunday that chanced to be Shrove Sunday, about eleven o'clock in the evening, a party of agents of the safety-service left the police-station at the old Barriere d'Italie. The mission of this party was to explore that vast precinct which extends from the road to Fontainebleau to the Seine, and from the outer boulevards to the fortifications. This quarter of the city had at that time anything but an enviable reputation. To venture there at night was considered so dangerous that soldiers from the forts, who came to Paris with permission to attend the theatre, were ordered to wait at the barriere, and not to pass through the perilous locality except in parties of three or four. After midnight, these gloomy and narrow streets became the haunt of flocks of homeless vagabonds. Escaped criminals and malefactors made this quarter their rendezvous. If the day had been a lucky one, they made merry over their spoils. When sleep overtook them, they hid in doorways or among the rubbish in deserted houses. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.