Guillaume Apollinaire returned one of the stolen statues to the French newspaper the "Paris-Journal". Apollinaire implicated his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning in the theft of the "Mona Lisa", but he was also exonerated. The theft of the "Mona Lisa" was perpetrated by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian house painter who acted alone and was only caught two years later when he tried to sell the painting in Florence. Apollinaire wrote the preface for the first Cubist exposition outside of Paris; "VIII Salon des Indépendants", Brussels, 1911. In an open-handed preface to the catalogue of the Brussels Indépendants show,
Paris in the 18th century in his career Voltaire had been welcomed to the salon of Madame Pompadour, and had been granted a government pension, which he did not touch for twelve years; the scholar and co-author of the first Encyclopedia, d'Alembert had been provided an apartment in the Louvre; and Rousseau had been feted and welcomed to the homes of the nobility. But under Louis XVI the royal attitudes changed. Voltaire very rarely visited Paris between 1760 and his death in 1784. Rousseau was allowed to return to Paris from exile only on the condition that he not publish any of his work. Nonetheless,