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Dujardin-Beaumetz was involved in another controversy that would for a time promise to throw light on the theft. The Department of Beaux-Arts had announced earlier in 1911 that it would allow a road to be built through the Saint-Cloud Park on the western outskirts of Paris, a move that people who lived around the park charged would destroy the natural beauty of the area. Protesters had demonstrated against the roadway throughout the summer of 1911. After the theft of the Mona Lisa, a handwritten note fell into the hands of the police. It declared that the painting was being held hostage to protect the park. It read, in part, “The Mona Lisa is well hidden in the house of the head stableman at the Parc de Saint-Cloud, where she was placed the very evening of her removal by the head gardener, who got it from one of the attendants of the museum. No use in looking elsewhere; she will be given back only if the park is left in its current state.” 15

The police searched the stableman’s house, as well as other locations in the park. They even explored the possibility that the spokesperson for a preservationist group had written the phony ransom note to give publicity to the efforts to preserve the park. If so, he succeeded, for an investigation revealed that Dujardin-Beaumetz had lied about the amount of damage the road would cause to the trees in the park. Months later, the pressure became too much for Dujardin-Beaumetz to endure, and he resigned his post.

Besides losing a masterpiece, the Louvre itself had suffered a great loss of pride. Paris-Journal ran the text of a sign that its editors suggested should be posted in the museum:

* * *

In the Interest of Art

And for the Safeguarding of the Precious Objects

THE PUBLIC

Is Requested to be Good Enough to

WAKE THE GUARDS

If they are found to be asleep.16

* * *

The day after the theft was announced, an article by Guillaume Apollinaire appeared in the evening newspaper L’Intransigeant. The poet and critic, after assessing the painting’s importance as art, criticized the museum’s security:

There is not even one guard per gallery; the small pictures in the Dutch rooms running along the Rubens gallery are literally abandoned to thieves.

The pictures, even the smallest, are not padlocked to the wall, as they are in most museums abroad. Furthermore, it is a fact that the guards have never been drilled in how to rescue pictures in case of a fire.

The situation is one of carelessness, negligence, indifference.

The Louvre is less well protected than a Spanish museum. 17

That last statement was a low blow indeed, although it would soon become clear to the authorities that Apollinaire knew far more about the Louvre’s security arrangements than he let on.

There were numerous false trails and hoaxes in connection with the case. A fourteen-year-old prostitute, Germaine Terclavers, already in custody, startled the police by claiming that her pimp and his gang had stolen the painting and that it was stored in Belleville, the apaches’ home base. She claimed that she had seen the painting herself and that the gang planned to ship it to the United States on an ocean liner.

Germaine had recently been arrested and sentenced by a judge to four years in a reform school, and she hoped to get a pardon by revealing what she knew. The police were able to find her nineteen-year-old boyfriend and pimp, named Georges. They placed him under arrest for carrying an illegal weapon — an all-purpose charge that the police routinely used to take into custody almost anyone they suspected of larger crimes. Georges turned out to be a feared gang leader, but whether he was skillful enough to carry off the Mona Lisa theft remained in doubt.

When questioned, Germaine provided more details, naming other gang members who she said had planned the crime for weeks. She had overheard them talking about a gardien (museum attendant), the Louvre, and La Joconde. According to her, she was even asked to serve