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The Count had gone a little mad, he began
doing strange and meaningless things.
He did not want to bury his great love,
he embalmed her, saying that he would keep her close forever.
I remember that in those days the Count was as crazy or invaded, perhaps demeaned or who knows what.
He was studying all day and all nights,
then he wrote; he wrote millions of formulas
which for me have no meaning.
Oh! But me, Commissioner, I am a smart woman and I understand things.
I know what the Count was studying! He was studying
the Magic... The Dark Magic, Commissioner!
More and more the Count Ladurée
lived in a straight-up fantasyland,
an impalpable world made up of visions.
He talked to his wife, as if she was still alive, but she was motionless, embalmed, a stuffed puppet! He talked to plants and animals! He no longer talked to people! He didn’t say any other word! He didn't say a word!
We are one of the wealthiest families in Paris, Mr. Monet, and we cannot afford certain rumors on our behalf.
We can’t! It’s trashy!
Oh! But me... I am a woman of high society, of great nobility and I know well certain things! So, I took my fur and my puppy dressed for the occasion and went to Reverend Dumas to denounce the facts and confess everything to God!
Then I went to the police with Count Ladurée’s documents and denounced him for his magic rituals and his heresies.
Thus, Count Ladurée had to take all of his stuff and run away from Paris, otherwise people would pilloried him as a heretic and / or Satan's follower!
Reading through his things I think he has fled to some distant or exotic country,
bringing the embalmed body of his beloved wife with him.
So he disappeared in a flash leaving their only beautiful daughter
in a shelter for orphans.
My adoption papers are all in the parish of Reverend Dumas.
Anyway,
what Count Ladurée left before escape his properly punishment, is all in his office; you can visit it whenever you want!
I left it as it was to facilitate the course of the investigation and now it is still as it was at the time.
Madame Tussauds said looking at
Dumas with a cunning glance.
It’s not a great story! ... It’s not a great story at all!
Commissioner Monet mumbled
beneath his long black mustaches,
while he was a long way off from hearing.
Her voice was too irritating for his ears. As a music that does not sound good. A scratched disc that stops the pin and blows up ruining
the melody of things.
Would you like something to drink?
A brandy or some coffee? Maybe some tea?
The waitress said to all
the guests in the salon.
In that night of shock-white snow
on the windows steamed up.
In this strange story, full of
unsolved mysteries.
It seemed that everyone, listening to the story about Count Ladurée, they had completely forgotten why they were there.
At that late hour in a night
a few days before Christmas.
They had completely forgotten about
Mary Jane and little Jean Baptiste.
They drank and had conversations again, about this and that, they talked about the weather changes and Madame Tussauds was a very good host. Then they drank a toast again,
making wishes each other.
Meanwhile, a few kilometers from there,
the two children slept with the animals in the warmth of the stable, dreaming of a happy Christmas.
Only after all the unnecessary pleasantries Commissioner C. Monet,
seemed to get away from the group, pursuing a quick thought that
it seemed to fly away and be unreachable.
Then, calling his Gendarme, he said:
Unleashed the dogs and look for the little girl and the baby boy all over Paris!
Arrest anyone who has not reported
the facts and protects the two fugitives!
Madame Tussauds and the Rev. Dumas nodded, as if Commissioner Monet
had addressed directly to them.
Unfortunately for the Gendarmerie and fortunately for the two children,
the next morning it looked like spring and
the snow melting fast,
hid all traces at sniffer dogs.
Sniffer dogs that, under the shining sun
of that morning, they found themselves in rivers
of running water to smell in vain.
Water followed its paths,
made of descents and slopes,
curves or recesses, and then puddles,
small ponds and canals.
Water, as was its mission,
besides the fact of irrigating the ground and
nourishing plants and all living things,
it was hiding with careful parsimony
the smell of the two fugitives.
It seemed that all Nature somehow protected the two children.
As if they were her first children or
a precious gift for everyone.
A miraculous harvest of fields
that had to be nourished with great care.
A fruit ... A red apple
given to all men and women
so that they may also know other truths.
The Sun rose and replaced the Moon.
The same thing happened even in the barn,
but here all the animals
saw it happen.
Not because they had nothing else to look at
but because the birth of a day,
like the growth of a child,
is the most important thing in the world.
A single ray of light passed
through the slit of the stable.
On the side where the children were sleeping, it lit up
Mary Jane’s face; she stretched herself and leaned in unison with Thomas the cat,
which, licking its private parts, soon after her, greeted the Sun with a giant yawning.
You look like the characters in that small village that humans call nativity scene!
