Art: Vandals

There is in Paris, as all the world knows, a museum set apart for the works of Auguste Rodin. There, last week, one of the famed sculptor’s masterpieces, The First Man, was found by attendants in a battered condition several yards from its pedestal as if it had been levitated by an infernal agency. Then it was noticed that four bronze statuettes had disappeared entirely. Detectives investigated, apprehended a ragpicker and three lads of 15, his Janissaries. This individual, coveting the statuettes, had sent the scalawags to cadge them, instructed them to perpetrate malicious mischief upon The First Man that it might the pore fittingly become his junkshop. A curio dealer named Vialatte had received the stolen properties. All were jailed.