1961-09-06 — Page 6

DID THE MAN WHO STOLE THE GOYA.

FTY years ago the world was astounded and appalled to learn that Leonardo da Vinci's master- piece, the Mona Lisa, whose enigmatic smile had beguiled millions of ad- mirers for centuries, had been staken from the Louvre in Paris.

Tho

covery modo

dis-

was

by

Sergeant Poupardin carly in the morning of Auquit 22. 1911.

Patrolling the Gallery of Apollo he noticed, as flung a cosital harkward glance un bis way out, ihat the space aur-

mally occupied by the paluting was romplete- ly blank.

Motive:

he fell

for the

THE CHINA MAIL, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1981.

KNOW ABOUT THE MAN WHO ROBBED THE LOUVRE?

Mona Lisa's double

Within serous two hundred Survle, the 750,000 imprints of and fifty guards were searching right thumbs provided no clue frantically through the ancient to the four thumb-prints on the place which houses France's glasst happened to be the left priceless art collection.

thumb.

À world-wide Investigation millowed. A Chicago art colice- for was suspected of having, it stolen for his private guy tu be ment.

At last, on a shelf in a Bile used staircase, they discovered the heavy, ornate frame and lass rover, Tac actual pickare

nowhere Was Jound.

SHOCKED

Their shucked incredulity is understandable. Security part- cautions had isen thought to be perfect.

uver

The framul picture weighed hundred polinds and anyway the painting itself, on a heavy piece of walnut four and a half feet

square, could hardly have been smuggled out.

Nevertheless, it had gone. The

Bertillun Alphonse famous for his now discredited

anthropometric" system measuring and classifying the physical features, including some crude finger-prints, of criminals

was called in,

Streal

أن

The picture was reported to have turned up in more than a dopen capitals. But the picture was not recovered,

The etioli was forgotten ...until two years luter.

In November, 1813. Alfredo der, an art dealer in Florence, received a letter from Paris - fering to sell him the original Mona Lisa,

A CRANK ?

pixel front ils velvet covering Tenderly he kissed the portrait and turned to the two men, his

ake eyes hinzing. vereanal. "Take it!

ave any more?"

be

1 can't

Pongi statt

apprehensive * gionee at Gert and whispered: told you he was mad." Pro- hug his magnifying glass, and photography for comparison, ne inspected the picture minutely.

's incredible," he saiti. "It is the Mona Jasa, There's not a doubt about it."

The young miRn, sohbhg hysterically, was arrested ter The picture! was takers theft.

crowded streets, the through

Throwing people, eteering and flowers a1 11, to the Um Gallery, where it had necupled a pince of honour centuries ago, to be on exhibition unce again.

On the last day of showing, too, huge crowds, Indignant at The thought that the writer, being denied I last glimpse, Vincenze Leonard, was certainly broke through the armed guards a crank, but thought it worth and stormed the gullery, causing while consulting his

friend bavue and damage. Glovanni Poggi, curator of the famous Utzi Gallery in Flor- -You might as well see it," Pogg's advice, "but it's bound to be a forgery."

ence.

With withering

was sarensan he pointed out that the docknob of the staircase door was miss- tag, and that it led into an

Courtyard, from open dre street could be reached,

On December 10 the doorbell of Gert's art shop clanged and which furtive, haggard young man ap. "The picture's at my pared. hotel," he announced, "and

want 50,000 francs for it,"

The art denler and the curator

Dulh Jean Nichusee. the Sherlock Holmes of France, und

Σ

Finally, escorted by resplendent sekliers In sodding phunes and with drawn sabres, the portrait was restored to its place in the Louvre-but the trama of Vin- cenzo Perrugin's trial (Lennard had proved an assumed name) was soon to have Parislans shed- ding sentimental tears. An amaz- bg love story unfolded.

Perrugia, sitting one day in Paris cafe, had espied a beau-

"Within seconds

250 guards

were searching

frantically

through the

ancient palace

which houses France's priceless art collection'

since a child, it had exercised a forcination over him.

Her warm, eniginatle smile- the sume immortal smile had changed to terror, however, до she was seen hi argument with a swarthy young man, She rose and made to leave but in a flash he sprang after her, stabbing her with a knife,

As the assailant fled from the cafe Perrugia was at her side, tending to her wound. He lifted her in his arms and took her to his home, oblivious of the tumult, murmuring "Mona Lisa, Monu

Lisa...."

DESTINY

Cx-

A mysterious destiny, he was convinced, had brought them together; inevitably, as an change t pussinfinte felters amply testified, they fell in love. When she died Perrugia, ernzy with grief, haunted the Louvre, sitting for hours before the por- trail.

This, he come to think, was really a portrait of Mathilde, as the girl's name was. This was. rightfully his portrait.

Methodically he went to work. He gained employment with the Gobier Pleture Framing Com- pany, which had frequent access to the Louvre, memorised its intricate labyrinth of corridors

! galleries and staircases.

He wailed until the Apollo! Gallery was emply, removed the picture from its hangers, hur- rled to the deserted staircase near the courtyard, look the panel frum its. frame and decamped through the court- yard into the street.

DESPERATE

For two years afterwards he

The sentimental jurists wept openly. His tender love for Mathilde was fully corroborated. Su, too, was her uncanny resemn

Stolen Elaner to the

picture, confirmed by photographs.

The sentence was a compare- tively light one, although he had been in custody for more than a year; a mere 380 daya' Impri- scument. Released from prison early in 1916, Perrugia was

red and utterly dispirited.

"The Mona Lisa has been the destruction of me," he told a fellow-prisoner immediately be

WHITEWASH

AS PANZERS PARADE IN PEMBROKE

A

tore he left the prison, "yet

of has been the whole theme my life. Without Mathilde 1 have nothing left to live for."

In the morning mlet the prily eun doors closed He disappeared, never to geen or heard of again.

Dennis

behind him. be

Bardens

(London Express Servico).

by

Clive Graham

PALE blue booklet stressing that the German High Command and its forces were in no way to blame for Hitler's war and were infamous- treated by the Allies after the surrender has been issued in English by the German Embassy in London.

Its purpose is to smooth

way for the German Panzer Army at the war's end becaus

it was obviously needed to

now in Pembrokeshire.

The booklet blames the Allies siem further Russian advances. for their stupidity in disbanding I what remained of the German

BRITAIN'S

SUPERSONIC

SCRAPYARD

ONLY THE LIGHTNINGS

ARE LEFT

By Chapman Pincher

THE R.A.F.'s Lightning fighter will be the only British supersonic plane on display when the aircraft industry opens its shop-window to foreign customers at the Farnborough Air Show.

of

barrier." Government

experts

"Swallow" supersonic plans which could spread Its wings for take-off and landing after spending £1,000,000 on it.

In prison

The Allies are openly BC- cuud of using legal methods

ac-

to try German military patriots Da war criminals. I even cuses them of taking away the livelihood of the German fessional soldiers by disbanding. the forces.

pro-

is 貔

ex- pro-

which The booklet, specially selected 37-page tract from a much bigger paganda document called "Ger- many Reports," states: "After the armistice millions of soldiers in the East and the West were kept in Imprisonment contrary tu law."

It goes on: "At Nuremberg und elsewhere, commanding offleers and other military men were sentenced following count- less trials in Allied military courts."

of

For those who are too young Then, after a row in Parlia- to remember or those who have ment, the Swallow scheme wi forgotten let us name some officially revived but starved of these ill-used commanding fund.. Only US. charity hazomicers of the Third Reich. saved it and American interests will reap any major profit.

Chickenhearted again.

Expensive

Thla

The military lenders convicted

war crimes at Nuremberg

of were Hermann Goering, former chief of the Luftwaffe who es- caped hanging. by comunitting suleide, Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keltel, and General Alfred Jodi,

Navy

Humand, the chief of the Surete, went to the man's dowdy bolel tiful young woman who looked lyed with the Mona Lisa In his supersonic Nighters and bombers ruled that it was too dangerous, arms. Projects are either can- which sank liners without warn-

reminded

with equal room. that, because of his Distraught and weeping, the syztun being followed at the young man unwrapped a wooden

dwarfed

the living image of da Vinci's room near the Louvre, Only famous portrait, which he him- when desperate for money did self knew so well because, ever he try to sell it,

Paris Newsletter from Sam White

Paris.

THIS time last week, lying naked on an isolated "beach in Cor- sica, I was interrupted in my sun-baking siesta by a strange Robinson Crusoe-like figure wild of eye and clad only in a piece of sacking which

he wore in the form of

a loin cloth.

He told me that he was the ollicial guardian of this magni- #cent stretch of sand. placed there precisely to protect

against nudists.

I apologised

it

The sackcloth Count

gets a job

on the beach

He explained that he spent harsh treatment meted out The summer months here to ex-General Challe und employed by the immensely worthy Count Jean de Beau- other senior ex-officers in mont who has a chateau near prison for last April's army

in my give by and who used this beach mutiny in Algiers. away French and was instant- regularly and wanted it to be

ly rendered doubly naked. kept clear of nudists.

Recently some

Challe and others

Married for 10

years

It is a superb maching but.

by the armaday shown at the recent Russian air show in Moscow and by the Americans at their flight dis- plays,

Why

pioneered

P

both hanged for crimes agulust humanity. Admiral Raoder, Com mander of the German tag, and Admiral Doenitz, the U-boat chief, both imprisoned.

are buying Bomb plot

performance pathelle runs right through the streraft industry and associate missile In the U.S. and Russia plota celled or completed far too late. went ahead and got through with so little trouble that the Even the Lightning is far be designers secured a long lead hind schedule. Britain, which while the British walted for

The Australians the jet-engine, so the results, of footling expert French supersonle fighters. The tar behind that the possiblities ments with unmanned robots.

Swim look like buying French of export orders for jet- combat planes have never been needed the revolutionary rockel-

After deciding that the Navy or Swedish combat planen, The

Germans and many other Euro- The German propaganda so thin?.

countries Dru buying chiefs claim that the Allies propelled SR.177 fighter, the pean

should have realised by July Government became worried Ainerlcan.

29, 1944, "at the latest about the cost.

The Lightning is fuo special- | that the German soldier is sod and expensive for many of something quite different from a dations So the Nazi, That was the date of the the smalter

British abortive prospecta of selling

bomb-in-the-briefcase combat planus abroad over the plot to assassinate Hitler, next five years seem negligible

What unless the Government puls

the booklet does not out is that the few some drive behind its existing point projects and starts up some new generals involved took action

only

belleved because they The Αυτο 730 supersonic

|Hitler was losing the wdr bomber was abandoned to make The T3.2 low-level bomber Until then they had carried out Alr expert William Green way for the Blue Streak rocket and P.1127 vertical take-off all his demands. lists at least Ave British super- which was cancelled three years fighter, are brilliant new British

combat

which later after nearly £100 mullan Ideas showing great promise for planes

overseas sales could have been eaming foreign had been spent on 31.

If they

can be money now the Hawker

produced quickly before other nations copy them. 2.1083---and P.1121, Avro 720, Supermarine 543, and Saunders- Roe SR.177.

The root cause, according to the puthoritative "R.A.F. Fly- Review," Is Government afupidity in ordering a succes- alon of supersonic planes and Then, after spending millions on Them, consigning them scrapyard.

to the

Money lost

ponic

Ever since the

war the Government has been chicken- hearted about mliitary aircraft. When test pliots who had sur- and

vived dozens of dog-ights childless, the Novaks adopted

10 give Britain the last a girl and then a boy. The wanted

lead boy was born in

1854

by crushing and supersonic

new planes through the "bound- mother, a abandoned by his university student who could family's dis-

not face her

pictures upproval,

"Ah, You Are English no There were few Invaders (19 became available of General She disappeared while her doubt," said my censor in the the beach is enormously dim- kind of English that indleated cult to reach and the few that an English nanny in his pant there were were foreigners,

Ile thereuport invited me to mostly English. join him for a glass of wind I had reason to reflect on in his hut-"my offelal re this later when I conducted a sidence" he called

ittle research work on the sand Count.

We climbed over the dunes into a tree-sheltered clearing where stood n

hut

mantle out of packing case Once rich

and "Handic

with "Fragile" with tare" and "Jekisicek Champagne" stamped on lous parts of its exterior.

My

found host new changed into a badly stain- ed, but still clearly elegant, dressing, gown.

From London

an

in their child's father, a fellow student, prison, which show that they made fruitless efforts to trace seem to be having a prolty her, meanwhile legally register- easy time of

Challe 19 ing his intention to recognise shown, pipe in hand, at lunch the child as his, with his fellow-prisoners.

There are wine bottles on A search

the lines-covered table, com-

fortable chairs, and allbrary

of books in the background,

Monsieur and Madame Novalc Other pictures show General were allowed to

the adopt Chulle receiving his wife in a

child a year later. Two years garden with several deck after the child's birth his chairs in evidence.

parents were married and bo-

an intensive search gan

var- The de Kersaints аге

ancient Brittany family And

In short, thin mutkain Armel, himself a bachelor, was officers are receiving treatment once rich and figured

pro- of a kind more usually minently in the social iron- clated with a rest home than leles of the 20s and 30s.

A prison. The fully bns

As for their wiven and faml- provided France over the centuries with Bes, they recek's half of the some of lia leading pallors, penalon to which they would including several adımirals, one be normally entitled. In addi-

killed in of whom was

tho on, raising funds for Madame battle of Quiberon,

Chaile and the wives of the

As though to give the change from sackcloth to slik its full

Cocial significance, he added

So the Germans were asked if they would order it too because ctherwise Britaits could Hut afford to make it. The Ger- mans rightly told the Govern- ment to make it first and then put it on sale. Result pro- jeet scrapped,

DE

A

Once

I July 1944 was the Intest the Allies should have realised the sterling worth of German The Government has lacked

"soldier Uness," what was the the courage either to cut Blue

earliert? The destruction of Streak's throat or give it the The only way the Govery-defenceless Rotterdam in 19407 real boost to get it moving. ment con leap the supersonic The execution

of the escaped Now, Imping along

gop it has created by Ita pastRA.F. prisoners from Stalag possible launcher for a Euro- blunders is by putting as much Laft II in April 19447 pean satellite, it has no hope whoosh behind these projecta | of serving that purpose before as the Tiger pilols will put be- Or should they perhaps have 1065 when it will be five years hind their

destruction of Lightnings when walted for the out of date.

they show them off at Farn-the Warsaw Chetto and the abandoned borough.

mass extermination of the Jews thero in August 1944—a manth afler the bomb plot?

The Goverment Dr. Barnes Wallis's

UN. and til give you Derlin

him.

for

of the couple adopted him.

An Indiscretion by official revealed the name

hnd

You give me the

who

W

In fact, several de Kersaints other ex-oMeers has become Court judged in favour of the have died in repelling the the most fashionable charity that he find bought the dressing Engilsh from the French caoul. in France, gown in London in 1932.

I was hapINI to find that

What with this and the rough the last of the line toas con- wine being poured Into the thing In a variant of the tumblers, the mement had family tradition.

cleatly come for Introduction.

He announced himself na the

Count Armel do Kersaint. Rest home

A tome jackdaw Blched

elgarettes from my packet

we talked.

Go

Agonising

Since then two court ver- diets were given in favour of

and it Madame Novak unly recently that the Suprema

boy'a natura! parenti.

Meanwhile the Novaks mnaf» riage was dissolved and they began

a legal battle between themselves for the custody of the two adopted children which finally resulted in M. Novak being given custody of the girl,

Now Madame

adopted boy.

A tragetly in preoccupying, with Mheme Novak is faced

France

ut

the moment.

What makes the tragedy com- "The Count looked in his early the headline in a ita central figure is a cul natural parents.

CEFTREATED like caltio” Known as the Novak affair, pieto is that both the boy's 30s, frail, blue eyes, with a

and Madame superb noso bigger but almost

are people of exactly the shape of that of Right Wing Paris wookly, tured

wamin in her early Novak herself

excellent character, the Jackdaw.

recounting the allegedly forties, Madamo Novak.

--{London Express Kervice).

ingenious

RUBIAN HORSE-TRADE

(London Express Service).

‚ World Chamright dE ANGADOMENE WEATHE ACONCRETAT IT WENDY

*

The booklet quotes a state- meat by Dr Adenauer in 1051 he affirmed; *No one blame the professional soldiers on account of their

when

must

former activity,

"Apart from the activists ant those who proted from the National Socialist regime, the

| chapter of the collective guilt of the militarists must be ended once and for ali," he said,

Belief

Only Hitler la to be blamed -one man driving Line whole unwilling German nation, What about the thousands of Sleg Heilers who turned up at the | Nuremberg ratllest

The frull Ip

unft thet Germany began to la defented most Germang boßeved thay

were profiting from Nazi rufe.

This propaganda booklet wili fail to Impress even those Briton biz Bellove the Ger- mang should now be 'anmed agalit the Communiat menace, And it giver the Russians Extra mmationR in their propaganda brår over Berlin.

For here is official proof that the Germans believe they pwed feel no blame for the devasta- |tion and despair they caused from the moment they marched Inte Polex-London Ingress Service.