ADVENTURES OF THE VENUS OF MILO.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 44, 27 November 1871, Page 3

ADVENTURES OF THE VENUS OF MILO.

The thought that this adorable work of art might become Prussian, filled French connoisseurs with dismay, so, after giving much thought to the subject, the guardians of the Louvre hit on an ingenious means of getting out of the difficulty. The statue was taken down from its pedestal, and laid in an oak coffin filled with wadding. In the dead of night some men who could be depended upon brought the coffin and its precious contents to a secret door in the Louvre, where it was taken up by some others and carried to a spot known only to themselves, were a crypt had been prepared for the goddess in the cellars of the Prefecture de Police. The hiding place was at the end of one of the numerous secret passages in the Perfecture. A wall was built in front of the spot where the Venus was laid, and covered over with rubbish, so as to give it the appearance of antiquity. To make assurance doubly sure, a heap of documents of some importance was laid in front of of this wall, and a second wall was then run up, so as to make it appear that the hidiug-place was made for the documents. Here the Venus remained during the whole of the siege. After the first siege it was proposed to replace her on her pedestal, but when the Commune was declared the guardians wisely determined to leave her where she was. Directly the army of Versailles resumed possession of the capital the guardians hastened to the Prefecture. The still smoking ruins of the Prefecture were carefully removed, and among them was found the oak coffin uninjured. “ A water pipe had miraculously saved the statue ; we might now apply to her the proud motto of the house at Heidelberg, ‘Praistat invicta Venus!’” The coffin was brought back to the Louvre, and opened before a commission appointed for that purpose. “ Every one leaned forward eagerly to look. Lying in her soft bed in a position which quite altered her usual appearance, her mouth half open as if to breathe the fresh air, she seemed to look gratefully on her preservers with that irresistibly charming smile which is unknown to modern lips. All her features and limbs were complete ; no injury had been done to the marble by the damp of the crypt in which it had so long been buried.