Police spies, who at all times drink good wine at the
tavern, and at night empty poor simpletons’ purses, and
to provide for your extortions silly thieves have to part
with their money, without complaining or clamouring,
yet they are planted in jail, like so many reeds, to be
plucked by the gaunt hangmen.
Oftentimes at the cashboxes, at places marked out for
plunder, they allow themselves to be despoiled, when
righting and resisting to save their confederate, while
we are practising our arts on the hidden coffers. You
make two or three onsets on the boon companions. Two or
three will mark them all for the gallows.
Hence, ye simple-minded vagabonds, turn away from the
gallows, which gives you the colic and will deprive you
of all, that you may deceive and steal what is of so much
value to the dupes, that you may outwit and thrash the
police, so eager to bring you to the scaffold.
For fear of the gibbet and the beam, exert more cunning
and be more wily, and be no longer in prison, thence to
be brought to the scaffold.