I was in a hurry to cross the boulevard to get to the Palais de Justice, where Hildegarde’s case was being heard, but today’s protest march was particularly endless. It was as if they had all agreed to stuff me around in a convergence of struggles based on a central idea that more or less sounded like we want to be able to buy things too. All you could say was that the claim really was the complete opposite of the sort of hostile proposition you’d expect to be aimed at the society against which all these people were railing; they could do nothing but voice their frustration, their discontent. It was such a pointless complaint when right next door, that very day, something truly serious was going down which really should have had them all gathering outside the gates of the Palais de Justice and getting ready to storm the place. Hildegarde, the sweetest, most inoffensive woman on the planet, was preparing to be sentenced by the Court of Appeal for having gained entry to an abattoir, where she had set up cameras in order to film the horrific manner in which the animals were slaughtered. And it was the second time she had done so.

After reading the charges, the chief justice noted that my friend was known – unfavourably – to the General Directorate for Internal Security for belonging to the vegan scene. So, the first thing I discovered was that there was such a thing as a vegan scene and that it was sufficiently threatening to warrant the payment of cops to keep my friend under surveillance and to regularly update her little file. And the other thing was that apparently the use of public opprobrium to stop animals from being carved up alive while suffering indescribable pain in order to fill tray-loads of meat which will for the most part end up being thrown away, all the while lining the pockets of an industry responsible for one of the principle causes of global warming, was considered a threat to public order . . .

I mentally filed away the image of Hildegarde standing before those three judges, hands clasped behind her interminable back, head bowed to receive her punishment, right next to the image of the little girl stuffed into the backpack of that arsehole father of hers, and the one of the passenger who was incinerated on the day of my accident, and the one of the first jumper my daughter knitted, which she insisted on continuing to wear, and the image of the disabled people lacking hands laughing at the prawns they were supposed to shell. A collection of rare mental images that have shaped who I am and have made my life something a little more than a succession of Instagram posts.