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Magistrate Drioux finally announced that he was granting the petition of Apollinaire’s lawyer for the release of his client.

Ironically, the incident gave Apollinaire the fame that his writings had never brought him. Because the story of his arrest was so entangled with the theft of the Mona Lisa, it was reported worldwide. The New York Times called him “a well-known Russian 66 literary man living in Paris [who] underwent a searching examination on the charge of having shielded Pieret from the law.” 67 Publicity of whatever kind proved beneficial to his career: afterward, Apollinaire’s writings reached a wider audience.

Moreover, imprisonment provided inspiration for what may be his most enduring work, a book of poetry titled Alcools (Spirits), published two years later. One of the poems is “À la Santé”:

I

Before I enter my cell

I am required to strip naked

And then a sinister voice cries

Guillaume what have you become

I am a Lazarus entering the tomb

Not leaving it as he did

Farewell farewell the rounds are singing

To my years To the young girls

……………………

V

How slowly the hours pass

Like a funeral procession

You will mourn the hour that you wept

Which will pass too quickly

As every hour passes

VI

I listen to the clamor of the city

A prisoner without a view

I see nothing but a hostile sky

And the naked walls of my prison

The daylight draws within itself

Yet here a lamp still burns

We are alone in my cell

Beautiful clarity Beloved reason

While Apollinaire looked for solace from clarity and reason in his cell, elsewhere in the city were many who sought to create chaos and disorder. Very soon, a few of those avowed anarchists — and not ones who merely fired pistols into the air, like Picasso — would tear the city’s attention away from the missing Mona Lisa. Real criminals were plotting a modernist crime.

7

THE MOTOR BANDITS

On the night of the thirteenth of December, 1911, three men traveled by train to the fashionable Paris suburb of Boulogne-sur-Seine. They had purchased one-way tickets, for they planned to return by automobile. Not just any automobile either. They had scouted the area in daylight, looking at the shiny new cars parked outside the grand houses, before selecting one that belonged to a family named Normand. It was a Delaunay-Belleville, which many people regarded as the finest automobile in the world. The company, through its showroom on the Champs-Élysées, sold only the chassis, complete with six-cylinder engine and tires. Each purchaser then had to arrange for the construction of his own distinctive body, or coach, with companies that catered to this trade. However, every Delaunay-Belleville was still easily recognized by its distinctive circular radiator, which reflected the company’s origins as a boiler manufacturer.

A Delaunay-Belleville was not a casual purchase. The chassis alone cost fifteen thousand francs, the equivalent of five years’ wages for the skilled workmen who built it. It was a favorite of Nicholas II, the czar of Russia (he is said to have owned twenty), and — to make a point about the superiority of the French auto industry — virtually the required form of transportation for the president of France.

The three men waited until all the lights inside the house were extinguished, and allowed time for everyone inside to fall asleep. Then they forced a side door to the garage, not a difficult task, for all of them were familiar with burglars’ tools. Once inside, they used flashlights to examine the car. One of the men, Jules Bonnot, was an experienced mechanic and professional driver.

The men opened the large door of the garage and pushed the car outside. Starting it would be a noisy process, but one of the men stood in front of the radiator and turned the crank that rotated the driveshaft while Bonnot sat in the driver’s seat and worked the ignition lever.

Nothing happened. A light went on in an upstairs room of the house, and the three men huddled. Deciding that they could not abandon their plan now, they pushed the automobile into the street