Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 | Page 9

moment,' continued M. Huguet. 'How do we know this is not a trick concocted by you and your father to mislead justice?'
'I have thought of that,' replied Le Bossu calmly. 'Let it be given out that I am under restraint, in compliance with Nadaud's request; then have some scaffolding placed to-morrow against the houses, as if preparatory to their being pulled down, and you will see the result, if a quiet watch is kept during the night.' The procureur and commissary exchanged glances, and Le Bossu was removed from the room.
It was verging upon three o'clock in the morning, when the watchers heard some one very quietly remove a portion of the back-boarding of the centre house. Presently, a closely-muffled figure, with a dark-lantern and a bag in his hand, crept through the opening, and made direct for the hearth-stone; lifted it, turned on his light slowly, gathered up the treasure, crammed it into his bag, and murmured with an exulting chuckle as he reclosed the lantern and stood upright: 'Safe--safe, at last!' At the instant, the light of half a dozen lanterns flashed upon the miserable wretch, revealing the stern faces of as many gendarmes. 'Quite safe, M. Pierre Nadaud!' echoed their leader. 'Of that you may be assured.' He was unheard: the detected culprit had fainted.
There is little to add. Nadaud perished by the guillotine, and Delessert was, after a time, liberated. Whether or not he thought his ill-gotten property had brought a curse with it, I cannot say; but, at all events, he abandoned it to the notary's heirs, and set off with Le Bossu for Paris, where, I believe, the sign of 'Delessert et Fils, Ferblantiers,' still flourishes over the front of a respectably furnished shop.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHEARS.
The vestiarian profession has always been ill-treated by the world. Men have owed much, and in more senses than one, to their tailors, and have been accustomed to pay their debt in sneers and railleries--often in nothing else. The stage character of the tailor is stereotyped from generation to generation; his goose is a perennial pun; and his habitual melancholy is derived to this day from the flatulent diet on which he will persist in living--cabbage. He is effeminate, cowardly, dishonest--a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body. He is represented by the thinnest fellow in the company; his starved person and frightened look are the unfailing signals for a laugh; and he is never spoken to but in a gibe at his trade:
'Thou liest, thou thread, Thou thimble, Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail; Away thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant; Or I shall so bemete thee with thy yard, As thou shalt think on prating while thou liv'st!'
All this is not a very favourable specimen of the way in which the stage holds the mirror up to nature. We may suppose that a certain character of effeminacy attached to a tailor in that olden time when he was the fashioner for women as well as men; but now that he has no professional dealings with the fair sex but when they assume masculine 'habits,' it is unreasonable to continue the stigma. In like manner, when the cloth belonged to the customer, it was allowable enough to suspect him of a little amiable weakness for cabbage; but now that he is himself the clothier, the joke is pointless and absurd. Tailors, however, can afford to laugh, as well as other people, at their conventional double--or rather ninth, for at least in our own day they have wrought very hard to elevate their calling into a science. The period of lace and frippery of all kinds has passed away, and this is the era of simple form, in which sartorial genius has only cloth to work upon as severely plain as the statuary's marble. It is true, we ourselves do not understand the 'anatomical principles' on which the more philosophical of the craft proceed, nor does our scholarship carry us quite the length of their Greek (?) terminology; but we acknowledge the result in their workmanship, although we cannot trace the steps by which it is brought about.
Very different is the plan now from what it was in the days of Shemus nan Snachad, James of the Needle, hereditary tailor to Vich Ian Vohr, when men were measured as classes rather than as individuals, and when a cutter had only to glance at the customer to ascertain to which category he belonged.
'You know the measure of a well-made man? Two double nails to the small of the leg'----
'Eleven from haunch to heel, seven round the waist. I give your honour leave to hang Shemus, if there's a pair of shears in the Highlands that has a baulder sneck than her ain at the camadh an