The war has led to so many upheavals¹ 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.
 
It was a plain case of kidnapping. The truth became known next morning. Count Alexis Vorski, a young Polish nobleman of dubious² reputation but of some social prominence³ and, by his own account, of royal blood, was in love with Véronique d'Hergemont and Véronique with him. Repelled⁴ and more than once insulted by the father, he had planned the incident entirely⁵ without Véronique's knowledge or complicity.
 
Antoine d'Hergemont, who, as certain published letters showed, was a man of violent and morose⁶ disposition⁷ and who, thanks to his capricious temper, his ferocious⁸ egoism and his sordid⁹ avarice¹⁰, had made his daughter exceedingly unhappy, swore openly that he would take the most ruthless revenge.
 
He gave his consent to the wedding, which took place two months later, at Nice. But in the following year a series of sensational¹¹ events transpired¹². Keeping his word and cherishing his hatred¹³, M. d'Hergemont in his turn kidnapped the child born of the Vorski marriage and set sail in a small yacht which he had bought not long before.
 
The sea was rough. The yacht foundered¹⁴ within sight of the Italian coast. The four sailors who formed the crew were picked up by a fishing-boat. According to their evidence M. d'Hergemont and the child had disappeared amid the waves.
 
When Véronique received the proof of their death, she entered a Carmelite convent.
 
These are the facts which, fourteen years later, were to lead to the most frightful¹⁵ and extraordinary adventure, a perfectly¹⁶ authentic¹⁷ adventure, though certain details, at first sight, assume a more or less fabulous¹⁸ aspect. But the war has complicated existence to such an extent that events which happen outside it, such as those related in the following narrative¹⁹, borrow something abnormal, illogical and at times miraculous²⁰ from the greater tragedy. It needs all the dazzling light of truth to restore to those events the character of a reality which, when all is said, is simple enough.