It was said that bringing together in one place military hearings, cybercrime and anti-terrorism matters on the one hand and organised crime and financial crimes on the other would, for prosecutors, completely transform both national security and the fight against money laundering. The Île de la Cité reprographics department would thus merge with the financial crowd from Boulevard des Italiens, and Hildegarde and I would finally be working together. It all promised to be magnificent, efficient and so on and so forth, except that access to this Babylonian structure only remained possible via the miserable Line 13 of the metro, where orange-vested ‘pushers’ already had to cram passengers in and the courts weren’t even open yet.

With an additional fifteen thousand people every morning, it was simply inconceivable for me; I was scarcely able to keep my feet in a carriage in ordinary circumstances.

After a few trial and error attempts which almost ended in catastrophe, I finally found a route. I would take the metro opposite my place to where the number 74 bus started on Rue de Rivoli – then, after brandishing my disabled card to get a priority seat next to the driver, I would head off to do battle with the traffic jams for an hour and a half. When I arrived, I would get off as best I could at Porte de Clichy, trying not to fall over. Then I would hobble painfully through the 300 metres of hazards posed by the horrendous building site that separated me from the courts. I would arrive sweating and exhausted. In the evening, when the traffic had calmed down, I would take an Uber home, completely wiped out. I couldn’t help my daughter with her homework anymore; fortunately Hildegarde’s mother was there to pick her up from school and watch her, otherwise I don’t know what I would have done.

I kept that up for a fortnight, through to the third installation phase, all the while clenching my teeth and suffering snide remarks because I regularly arrived late no matter what time I left home, and then one morning I cracked and took the metro, telling myself that the packed crowd would keep me upright without me having to cling onto my crutches. But when the door opened at the Porte de Clichy station, I was swept up so violently in the surge of people getting off that one of my legs with its orthosis slipped into the gap between the carriage and the platform, and if somebody hadn’t had the presence of mind to pull the alarm, it would have been ripped off when the train departed.

I arrived at work trembling and started to cry uncontrollably. Hildegarde called my boss, who put me on sick leave for a month.

That’s when I went to my father’s birthday and, well, the rest you know.

The Iroise Sea

15 July 1870

Jules could not believe he had made it to his destination after such a terrifying crossing.