After Vidocq and Lacenaire, a third character must be introduced. He made only a short appearance; his notoriety lasted hardly more than a day. He was merely the passing figure of minor illegalities: a child of thirteen, without home or family, charged with vagabondage and whom a two-year sentence had no doubt long placed in the circuits of delinquency. He would certainly have passed without trace, had he not opposed to the discourse of the law that made him delinquent (in the name of the disciplines, even more than in the terms of the code) the discourse of an illegality that remained
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