‘We call it a favela,’ Levy said as he saw Laurent staring at it. ‘And sadly, it has far too many residents.’

Laurent thought of Paris, where the poor seemed almost invisible. Here, wealth and poverty seemed to have separated themselves totally from each other.

‘Yes, Senhor Brouilly,’ Levy echoed his thoughts. ‘Here in Brazil, the rich are very rich and the poor are . . . starving,’ he shrugged.

‘Are you Portuguese, monsieur?’

‘No. My mother is Italian and my father German. And I am a Jew. Here in Brazil, you will find a very large melting pot of different nationalities, although it is the Portuguese who consider themselves the true Brazilians. We have immigrants from Italy, Spain, and, of course, the Africans, who were brought over as slaves by the Portuguese to work on the coffee farms. And nowadays, Rio is experiencing a huge influx of Japanese. Everyone comes here seeking their pot of gold. Some find it, but others sadly do not, and end up in the favelas.’

‘It’s very different from France. Most of our residents are French born and bred,’ commented Laurent.

‘But this is the New World, Senhor Brouilly,’ Levy said, ‘and we will all make it what it is, whatever our original place of birth.’

For the rest of his life, Laurent would never forget the bizarre spectacle of Christ’s enormous head sitting in a field, while chickens pecked at the soil around it and a large cockerel preened itself as it sat atop His nose.

‘Senhor da Silva Costa called me at five this morning, anxious to know his precious Cristo had made the journey safely. So I decided to reconstruct the pieces here and make sure there is no damage. And so far, all is well,’ Levy confirmed.

The sight of the head, last seen as a whole in Landowski’s atelier and now here in Rio thousands of miles away, almost brought a lump to Laurent’s throat.

‘It looks to me as if He was kept safe on His journey. Maybe watched over by heaven,’ said Levy, also moved by the sight. ‘I won’t endeavour to put the hands together yet, but I had a look and they too seem to have escaped without a scratch. One of my workers will take a photograph to mark the occasion for all of us. I will also send it to Senhor da Silva Costa, and Landowski of course.’

The photograph duly taken, and having closely surveyed the head and hands so he too could write to Landowski and reassure him, Laurent hoped the same good luck had befallen his sculpture of Bel, currently sitting in a crate on the dock somewhere inside the main port.

After agonising over the sale, Laurent had taken Landowski’s advice and decided to accept Senhor Aires Cabral’s offer of two and a half thousand francs. Landowski had been right: he could always sculpt another and it was a windfall that was impossible to refuse, whatever the future held.