The Cathedral Thief

The thievery caused, against all odds, quite a commotion in the land. The newspapers spread the story quickly, and they gave it more importance than it normally would’ve had. They were enraged, calling it ‘a terrible outrage done to our most precious national monuments’, and ‘an insult in the face of the grandness of French patrimony’, in that grandiloquent way that newspapers can use to capture the reader’s attention, even now. The newspapers spun quite a little tale around the incident, linking it to similar events that had happened first in Strasbourg and then in several churches of the Parisian periphery. It was the newspapers of the time which first made up the story of the cathedral thief.

One of these newspapers fell into the greedy hands of Madame Odette, and before the clock had struck ten, she had already retold the story to half the inhabitants of our building. She was in the process of retelling it to the old war-veteran from the first floor when I came down the stairs and overheard it.

I was coming down the stairs, running, and they were both standing in front of her door. She had the newspaper in her hand, that she had undoubtedly bought just a while ago. He was shaking his head in a disapproving way, muttering things about crimes and unsocial behavior, and that it was probably again the work of some gypsies or God knows what other strangers plagued the country. She was agreeing with him wholeheartedly.

I stopped on my tracks, keeping my balance on the third march of the stairs with great difficulties, held my breath, and hoped to hear more of the stories. The words ‘theft’, ‘Notre-Dame’ and ‘statue’ had captured my attention, and I wanted to know more of it. Without asking them, of course. I was not enough confident in the presence of the both of them to do that. To be honest, he scared me a little, and she annoyed me a lot. But I had to keep the appearance of being as pleasant as possible, for I don’t know what we would have done if Madame Odette had decided not to keep us here. Even if I had ventured to ask, though, they probably wouldn’t have answered me. I was nothing more than a child to them. No one would ever talk to me about anything.

But unfortunately I had no time to overhear anything more because they’d heard me coming down, and as soon as I stopped, Madame Odette called.

“No running on the stairs,” she said, in her croaky old voice. “How many more times will I have to say it again?”

I resumed my walk, slowly and silently this time, and lowered my head. “Sorry,” I muttered as I passed in front of the two of them. “Won’t do it again.”

None of them answered. He just muttered under his breath “kids, no education, nowadays,” and she silently agreed, and I ran away as fast as I could, not wanting to face them.

I met Damien in the courtyard. “Have you heard?” was the first thing I asked him.

“Heard of what?” he replied, an amused smile on his face, “and hello to you too, Sophie.”

“Hello,” I mumbled. “Have you heard, then? About the theft?”

There was a split second during which he was silent and just stared at me. “What theft?” he then asked.

“In the cathedral.”

He shook his head, and listened as I told him what I knew, then said, in a rather cheerful voice, given the circumstances: “Afraid there’s not much we can do. Police’ll do their work. Tell me, have you ever seen the Sacré-Coeur?”

I shook my head, “I can’t,” I mumbled, “I’ve got to watch over Chat today, while mother is working…”

“Then we’ll take her with us,” Damien offered, and although the perspective of taking Chat along with us didn’t enchant me very much, I agreed, because Chat or no Chat, it meant that I could spend a little more time with Damien.