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Chevaliers D'industrie, Or Polite Sharpers

Affable, insinuating to a degree, he might be compared to those
brigands of Egypt who embraced their victims in order to strangle
them.[1] He never showed more devotedness than when he meditated
some perfidy, nor more assurance than when convicted of the
rascality. Playing fast and loose with honour and the laws, he
was sure to find, when threatened by the arm of justice, the
female relatives of the judges themselves taking his part and
doing their best to 'get him off.' Such was this extraordinary
chevalier d'industrie, who might have gone on with his diabolical
perpetrations had he not, at last, attempted too much, failing in
the grandest stroke he had ever meditated--and yet a vulgar
fraud--when he was convicted, branded, and sent to the
galleys.[2]

[1] Senec., Epist. Ii.
[2] Dusaulx, De la Passion du Jeu.

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