Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 10

# The French Police Spy

This issue contains the complete first-person narrative "The French Police Spy," attributed to an unnamed author writing autobiographically. The story begins in 1775 Arras, France, where the narrator—a physically large, athletically gifted child—describes his youth: street fighting, learning fencing, apprenticeship in his father's bakery. His early delinquencies include petty theft from the family till with accomplice Poyant. After being caught and briefly imprisoned, he returns home reformed but soon relapses. Poyant persuades him to rob his parents of nearly 2,000 francs. Fleeing to northern France and Belgium, the narrator attempts emigration but is drugged and robbed by "land sharks" at Ostend. Destitute, he secures work aboard a ship, then encounters an itinerant menagerie operated by the physician-charlatan Cotte-Comus and naturalist Garnier, who engage him as a rope-dancer trainee. The narrative establishes a picaresque adventure following a career criminal's formation.