Translation:The infamies of the Roubaix police

The other day, you shouted at me: You can write my name. It is that of an honest man. Yes, I am brave and honest.

You are mistaken, my poor friend, one cannot be brave doing the job you do, and an honest man does not eat that kind of bread.

I don't hold it against you for what you did to me. You chased me as far as the Galon d'eau, you put your grip on my shoulder, you chained me, you threw me in the clink. I am ready to endure a hundred infamies like these; each time, I find an opportunity to give advice to a poor fellow like you. Well then, listen to me! The action you took is illegal first of all, in that it violated the very laws for the execution of which the fine body in which you serve was established; it is unjust secondly, since it resulted in making someone suffer who did not deserve to suffer! Come on! Answer, you wretched man, is he who unjustly makes his fellow man suffer brave and honest?

And how many similar actions, Lortiwal, do you not have to reproach yourself for? How many arrests under the same conditions? How many rough shoves given along the way! And, at the station, how many times, in complicity with your comrades, have you not taken off your tunic to better beat up the wretched souls rounded up? Is it because you have done all this that you believe yourself brave and honest?

One must eat, you say. Shame on him who degrades himself to live! There is a Latin proverb about that, I will not tell it to you, because you are but a poor beast, but, know this, when your saber was handed to you, you would have done better to run it through your gut than to hang it at your side, now forever dishonored. You would be dead; but it is better to be a corpse than a snitch.

No, you are not brave and honest.

Look who commands you if you want to know who you are.

As soon as the fat pig has someone arrested, he piles lie upon lie, so that this someone would be held in prison longer.

Recently, a young fraudster, Nimbot, was on trial. The fat pig wrote that this man fought every day, and that every evening, he was picked up dead drunk. Inquiries revealed that Nimbot had stayed in Roubaix for a total of three days. No matter, the fat pig said that he fought every day.

That liar, Lortiwal, is your master.

The day before yesterday, in Douai, Félix Lanneau appeared before the court. Félix Lanneau has always had the most upright conduct. He raised his two younger brothers and was their apprenticeship master. He gave them, with the best examples, a good trade. Also sweet and good when his father died. Since then, he has been the consolation, the support, the pride of his mother, the poor desolate widow. All the neighbors can attest that never, never, has Félix stayed out all night!

The fat pig wrote to the Court that Félix Lanneau was living in concubinage and that he beat his mother.

Lortiwal! Lortiwal! The fat pig, the infamous fat pig, who slanders children and breaks the hearts of mothers, is your master.

Ah! If you want to be brave and honest, stop debasing yourself by obeying such a being, trample your uniform underfoot before him, spit in his face, and come and swell the ranks of those who want to revolt.

I tell you, before long there will be a revolt in Roubaix, and it will be more honorable for you to be with those who will attack the police, than among those who will defend the Town Hall.