they could have none of those interpreters who are only to be found amongst a long-established people, and who have political and commercial intercourse with other nations.  Where, then, did the gipsies obtain interpreters?  The answer seems to us to be clear.  Receiving into their ranks all those whom crime, the fear of punishment, an uneasy conscience, or the charm of a roaming life, continually threw in their path, they made use of them either to find their way into countries of which they were ignorant, or to commit robberies which would otherwise have been impracticable.  Themselves adepts in all sorts of bad practices, they were not slow to form an alliance with profligate characters who sometimes worked in concert with them, and sometimes alone, and who always framed the model for their own organization from that of the gipsies.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 374.—­Orphans, Callots, and the Family of the Grand Coesre.—­From painted Hangings and Tapestry from the Town of Rheims, executed during the Fifteenth Century.]

This alliance—­governed by statutes, the honour of compiling which has been given to a certain Ragot, who styled himself captain—­was composed of matois, or sharpers; of mercelots, or hawkers, who were very little better than the former; of gueux, or dishonest beggars, and of a host of other swindlers, constituting the order or hierarchy of the Argot, or Slang people.  Their chief was called the Grand Coesre, “a vagabond broken to all the tricks of his trade,” says M. Francisque Michel, and who frequently ended his days on the rack or the gibbet.  History has furnished us with the story of a “miserable cripple” who used to sit in a wooden bowl, and who, after having been Grand Coesre for three years, was broken alive on the wheel at Bordeaux for his crimes.  He was called Roi de Tunes (Tunis), and was drawn about by two large dogs.  One of his successors, the Grand Coesre surnamed Anacreon, who suffered from the same infirmity, namely, that of a cripple, rode about Paris on a donkey begging.  He generally held his court on the Port-au-Foin, where he sat on his throne dressed in a mantle made of a thousand pieces.  The Grand Coesre had a lieutenant in each province called cagou, whose business it was to initiate apprentices in the secrets of the craft, and who looked after, in different localities, those whom the chief had entrusted to his care.  He gave an account of the property he received in thus exercising his stewardship, and of the money as well as of the clothing which he took from the Argotiers who refused to recognise his authority.  As a remuneration for their duties, the cagoux were exempt from all tribute to their chief; they received their share of the property taken from persons whom they had ordered to be robbed, and they were free to beg in any way they pleased.  After the cagoux came the archisuppots, who, being recruited from the lowest dregs of the clergy and others who had been in a better position, were, so to speak, the teachers of the law.  To them was intrusted the duty of instructing the less experienced rogues, and of determining the language of Slang; and, as a reward for their good and loyal services, they had the right of begging without paying any fees to their chiefs.