Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection by Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler Page A
Authors: Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler
Tags: History
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the series “the modern Aeneid.” Apollinaire
believed that though all social classes enjoyed the series, there were “only a few
bon esprits
who appreciated the series with the same good taste as himself.” 50
Fantômas’s popularity may have been galling to the real-life members of the Sûreté. The truth was that in Paris, the forces
of law were regarded with distrust. Since the time of Napoleon, one of the chief duties of the police had been to spy on the
populace. Through all of the changes in government that had taken place since then, the laws of the Napoleonic Code had not
been repealed, and indeed a host of new criminal regulations had been passed. This left such a patchwork of a legal system
that the police could find almost any reason to investigate or detain a person. Moreover, because the police files had been
destroyed during the Commune, the authorities had rushed to build up new dossiers, compiling information on as many people
as they could. Often the accusations in these hastily assembled files, gleaned from sources as diverse as professional informers
or disgruntled neighbors, were utterly untrue.
Bertillon, despite his faults, was one of a number of people who were trying to bring a new spirit of scientific investigation
to crime solving, a process that had been going on in France ever since the Sûreté had been founded nearly a century before.
Joining him were social scientists and psychologists who investigated the roots and causes of crime, arguing whether people
were innately criminal or not — and if not, what drove them to crime.
Bertillon’s search for the
Mona Lisa
would bring him into the world of avant-garde artists in Montmartre, where Picasso was engaged in his own investigation of
what was real and what was illusory. From the day he first arrived in Paris, the young artist knew the city, with its glitter
and grit, its gaiety and gloom, was to be his inspiration. His canvases often portrayed people who existed in the demimonde
between respectability and illegality, just as he experienced in the city around him. His most famous painting of this period
shows five prostitutes whose expressions are as challenging in their way as the
Mona Lisa
’s famous smile. To create it, Picasso had to break the boundaries of his art, something only a genius could do. To solve
the theft of the
Mona Lisa,
Bertillon would have to do that in his own field, and ultimately he would fail.
2
SEARCHING FOR A WOMAN
T he disappearance of the
Mona Lisa
from the Louvre stunned Parisians, who had long dismissed any impossible task with the remark that doing so “would be like
trying to steal the
Mona Lisa.
” 1 The theft was, however, a blessing for the city’s newspapers and magazines, which had prospered during the Third Republic.
As the government ended its censorship policies, the circulation of Paris’s newspapers had nearly tripled what it had been
in 1880. Nothing sold papers as well as crime stories, and this one was unparalleled for its sensational qualities. For days,
headline writers competed for the
mot juste
to describe the
Mona Lisa
theft, struggling for a word to adequately express the shock: “INIMAGINABLE!” “INEXPLICABLE!” “INCROYABLE!” “EFFARANT!” 2 A newspaper printed a doctored photo of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame with one tower missing. The caption read, “Couldn’t this
happen too?” 3 For Parisians, who loved both crime and art, it was an all-consuming event.
It was personal too.
Le Figaro
’s editor wrote, “Since it has disappeared, perhaps forever, one must speak of this familiar face, whose memory will pursue
us, filling us with regret in the same way that we speak of a person who died in a stupid accident and for whom one must write
an obituary.” 4 Less seriously, the
Revue des Deux Mondes
wrote that the meaning of the famous smile was now clear: Mona Lisa had been thinking of the fuss her disappearance would
believed that though all social classes enjoyed the series, there were “only a few
bon esprits
who appreciated the series with the same good taste as himself.” 50
Fantômas’s popularity may have been galling to the real-life members of the Sûreté. The truth was that in Paris, the forces
of law were regarded with distrust. Since the time of Napoleon, one of the chief duties of the police had been to spy on the
populace. Through all of the changes in government that had taken place since then, the laws of the Napoleonic Code had not
been repealed, and indeed a host of new criminal regulations had been passed. This left such a patchwork of a legal system
that the police could find almost any reason to investigate or detain a person. Moreover, because the police files had been
destroyed during the Commune, the authorities had rushed to build up new dossiers, compiling information on as many people
as they could. Often the accusations in these hastily assembled files, gleaned from sources as diverse as professional informers
or disgruntled neighbors, were utterly untrue.
Bertillon, despite his faults, was one of a number of people who were trying to bring a new spirit of scientific investigation
to crime solving, a process that had been going on in France ever since the Sûreté had been founded nearly a century before.
Joining him were social scientists and psychologists who investigated the roots and causes of crime, arguing whether people
were innately criminal or not — and if not, what drove them to crime.
Bertillon’s search for the
Mona Lisa
would bring him into the world of avant-garde artists in Montmartre, where Picasso was engaged in his own investigation of
what was real and what was illusory. From the day he first arrived in Paris, the young artist knew the city, with its glitter
and grit, its gaiety and gloom, was to be his inspiration. His canvases often portrayed people who existed in the demimonde
between respectability and illegality, just as he experienced in the city around him. His most famous painting of this period
shows five prostitutes whose expressions are as challenging in their way as the
Mona Lisa
’s famous smile. To create it, Picasso had to break the boundaries of his art, something only a genius could do. To solve
the theft of the
Mona Lisa,
Bertillon would have to do that in his own field, and ultimately he would fail.
2
SEARCHING FOR A WOMAN
T he disappearance of the
Mona Lisa
from the Louvre stunned Parisians, who had long dismissed any impossible task with the remark that doing so “would be like
trying to steal the
Mona Lisa.
” 1 The theft was, however, a blessing for the city’s newspapers and magazines, which had prospered during the Third Republic.
As the government ended its censorship policies, the circulation of Paris’s newspapers had nearly tripled what it had been
in 1880. Nothing sold papers as well as crime stories, and this one was unparalleled for its sensational qualities. For days,
headline writers competed for the
mot juste
to describe the
Mona Lisa
theft, struggling for a word to adequately express the shock: “INIMAGINABLE!” “INEXPLICABLE!” “INCROYABLE!” “EFFARANT!” 2 A newspaper printed a doctored photo of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame with one tower missing. The caption read, “Couldn’t this
happen too?” 3 For Parisians, who loved both crime and art, it was an all-consuming event.
It was personal too.
Le Figaro
’s editor wrote, “Since it has disappeared, perhaps forever, one must speak of this familiar face, whose memory will pursue
us, filling us with regret in the same way that we speak of a person who died in a stupid accident and for whom one must write
an obituary.” 4 Less seriously, the
Revue des Deux Mondes
wrote that the meaning of the famous smile was now clear: Mona Lisa had been thinking of the fuss her disappearance would
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