Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur

These stories of detectives and apaches from the high life or the street have always had a singular and powerful attraction. Balzac, leaving M me of Morsauf lived the dramatic existence of a police bloodhound. He left the lily of the valley there for the refractory of the stream. Victor Hugo invented Javert, giving chase to Jean Valjean as the other "inspector" pursued Vautrin. And both were thinking of Vidocq, that strange wolf-wolf turned watchdog, whose poet des Misérablesand Rubempre's novelist had been able to gather the confidences. Later, and in a lower order, Monsieur Lecoq had aroused the curiosity of enthusiasts of the judicial novel, and M. de Bismarck and M. de Beust, these two adversaries, one fierce, the other spiritual, had found, before and after Sadowa, what divided them the least: the stories of Gaboriau.These stories of detectives and apaches from the high life or the street have always had a singular and powerful attraction. Balzac, leaving M me of Morsauf lived the dramatic existence of a police bloodhound. He left the lily of the valley there for the refractory of the stream. Victor Hugo invented Javert, giving chase to Jean Valjean as the other "inspector" pursued Vautrin. And both were thinking of Vidocq, that strange wolf-wolf turned watchdog, whose poet des Misérablesand Rubempre's novelist had been able to gather the confidences. Later, and in a lower order, Monsieur Lecoq had aroused the curiosity of enthusiasts of the judicial novel, and M. de Bismarck and M. de Beust, these two adversaries, one fierce, the other spiritual, had found, before and after Sadowa, what divided them the least: the stories of Gaboriau.