Mysterious Affair in Paris.
We alluded a few days since to the notorious history of the Stockwell Ghost as forming a curious coincidence with a scene of a more serious nature lately acted in one of the French provinces. We find, however, from some of the Paris papers, that during the major part of last week, a hoax of a description which comes still nearer to its English prototype, but on a far more extended scale, has engaged the attention of the metropolis itself, and that the authors of it have hitherto set all conjecture, and even the most serious efforts of the police, at defiance. We shall let these good people tell their story in their own way:-
“Oh, you don’t believe in ghosts then?” said Mons. Nant, a grocer in the Rue d’Enfer, to the Commissary of Police of the Quarter of Sorbonne, last Sunday week (the 10th inst.). “For my part I do, and good reason have I for doing so. Only look there, see the whole front of my shop turned topsy-turvy, every thing in it broken and battered, and the window panes all smashed to atoms; this is the ghost’s doings, who, for three whole days, has been tormenting the whole street d’Enfer.”
The magistrate smiled on him, with a look of compassion, and accompanied by the Sieur Vidoe and his brigade, patroled the whole neighbourhood; and finding all quiet, began to doubt the very substantial evidence before his eyes, when all at once there came such a shower of stones, dashing through the windows, that his philosophy was a little disconcerted. The troops spring forward; search, examine, in all directions, every thing is quiet out of doors, not a human being is to be seen. They almost begin to believe it is the work of some invisible spirit.
After having made his proces verbal of the transaction, the commissary, M. Roche, retired, leaving behind him a sentinel with positive orders not to stir from the spot a moment. The night passed off much more quietly than had been expected, but in the morning a middle-sized man presented himself to M. Nant. “You are persecuted by a magician,” said the unknown. “I come to offer you my services. It is true, I am myself but a ‘petit physicien,’ but follow me, and I will bring you to a ‘grand physicien,’ who resides in the Palais Royal. He will deliver you from all the malignant tricks of evil intelligences. Your persecutor is hid in a great hole under an enormous stone, but you shall be enabled to lift it up without difficulty, only do not be afraid, and you will be able to see and appease him by paying a sum of money. Follow me!”
“Follow me yourself,” cried the police agent, seizing by the collar the infernal agent, who had not perceived him, as he sat concealed in a corner of the shop. Resistance was in vain; the infernal spirits have less power in open daylight, and he was compelled to surrender. This “petit physicien” of five feet eight inches, is a carpenter, named Dorigny, residing in the Rue St Dominique d’Enfer, No.7.
His apprehension, however, threw no light on the origin of the disturbances, nor did it produce their discontinuance. On the contrary, his arrest seemed to have redoubled the spite of the evil spirits, and through the whole of the 11th, their vagaries in the shop of M. Nant were continued with increased vigour. It seemed to become necessary to have recourse to the exorcisms used in these cases in former days, and nothing can be imagined more comical than the extravagant terrors excited among the gossips of the neighbourhood, or more curious than the reasonings of their husbands.
A group consisting of about 40 persons formed itself in the morning round the grocer’s door, every one listening eagerly to the remarks of his neighbour, when on a sudden loud cry interrupted their half-whisperings. A new attack was commenced by the spirits of darkness; or, to speak without metaphor, there was another grand discharge of stones, followed by a general crash of M. Nant’s flasks.
From what quarter did this infernal artillery proceed? We know no more than the police and the crowd who witnessed its effects. Some pretend the stones came through the wall, others that they saw them go through the door. One individual asserts they fell from Heaven; another, that they came from the earth. But who threw them? There’s another difficulty! The devil, the police, the ghosts, the thieves, the Jesuits, are all accused in their turn. The Jesuits? Ah, the matter is clear. From Mont Rouge to the Place St. Michel, have we not the Catacombs? and it is notorious that for some time no one has been allowed to go down into them; they certainly intend secretly to undermine and blow up the Sorbonne! That’s the business!
In the mean time the advocates of the black art have some reason on their side. The “Petit Physicien,” who has been arrested, is a living witness of its existence and its power, and what tends to confirm it is that M Comte, the King’s Physicien, went, they say, immediately to look at the place. “Well, and what did he see? What did he say?” “Oh, nothing, that we can understand, but he said a great deal to his companions, and all he knows they know.”
In the meantime, various as the popular rumours are, it addmits of no doubt that considerable consternation exists in the quarter of the Sorbonne. At nine o’clock in the evening of the 11th the crowd was increasing every moment, more than six hundred persons had assembled in the quarter d’Enfer. Numerous parties of the Gendarmerie were posted round, and patrols of troops of the line, reinforced by officers of the police, had encircled the shop, and filled the streets adjacent. The stones, meanwhile, were falling every instant, and in the very presence of a dozen agents posted in the grocer’s house, to surprise the invisible disturbers; most of the few jugs and bottles which had hitherto remained untouched, were broken with a tremendous clatter.
What is most astonishing, it is in vain that they close the front of the shop, and the street-door. The uproar continues in the interior, and disconcerts all their conjectures.
The police, it is understood, have arrested the keeper of a livery-stable, named Arnaud, who lives at No. 3, in the Rue Carpentier, because he was walking by with a stone in his hand. On the 12th the showers of acrolites continued as thick as ever, and the crowd of curious people drawn together by this inexplicable phenomenon continued to increase.
The police arrested a young man named Langois, who had contrived to extract a few five-franc pieces, and a dinner or two, from M. Nant, under pretence of being a police-officer. On the other side, the honest grocer finds the number of his customers increase, and it becomes a question, whether he has most reason to complain of the mischief done by the ghosts, or to congratulate himself on the extended business which they have procured him. This circumstance gives scope for reflexion, as to whether we are still living in times when the devil enriches those who enter into compact with him.
[…]
On the 13th (Wednesay last), the “petit physicien” was set at liberty; it appeared that the poor fellow was only a wag, who from an inordinate love of fun, thought it would be a capital joke to experimentalize upon the simplicity of M. Nant, when, in the midst of his pleasantry, the police officer pounced upon him, and he found to his cost that this sort of gentry do not understand raillery. During the day, the poor grocer was enabled to vend his pepper and nutmegs in peace, but an immense crowd still filled that and the neighbouring streets.
Globe, 21st September 1826.