The pickpockets' profession
demands extraordinary nimbleness and agility, a terrific certainty of
movement, not to mention a ready wit, a talent for observation and
strained attention. Some have a positive vocation for breaking open
safes: from their tenderest childhood they are attracted by the
mysteries of every kind of complicated mechanism--bicycles, sewing
machines, clock-work toys and watches. Finally, gentlemen, there are
people with an hereditary animus against private property. You may
call this phenomenon degeneracy. But I tell you that you cannot entice
a true thief, and thief by vocation, into the prose of honest
vegetation by any gingerbread reward, or by the offer of a secure
position, or by the gift of money, or by a woman's love: because there
is here a permanent beauty of risk, a fascinating abyss of danger, the
delightful sinking of the heart, the impetuous pulsation of life, the
ecstasy! You are armed with the protection of the law, by locks,
revolvers, telephones, police and soldiery; but we only by our own
dexterity, cunning and fearlessness. We are the foxes, and society--is
a chicken-run guarded by dogs.
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