Maurice Leblanc 
The Secret of Sarek 

The war has led to so many upheavals that not many people now remember the Hergemont scandal of seventeen years ago. Let us recall the details in a few lines.

One day in July 1902, M. Antoine d’Hergemont, the author of a series of well–known studies on the megalithic monuments of Brittany, was walking in the Bois with his daughter Véronique, when he was assaulted by four men, receiving a blow in the face with a walking–stick which felled him to the ground.

After a short struggle and in spite of his desperate efforts, Véronique, the beautiful Véronique, as she was called by her friends, was dragged away and bundled into a motor–car which the spectators of this very brief scene saw making off in the direction of Saint–Cloud.