The fog of delusion is a dangerous thing, and in the commune of Nogent-le-Rutrou, it led a poor, aged soul straight into the clutches of the law. An old man of eighty-two years, his mind clouded by whispers of a great upheaval, became convinced that President Emmanuel Macron had been cast down from his high throne. Overcome by a sudden, frantic joy, the fellow did not seek a glass of wine to celebrate, but instead seized a rifle and marched into the open air to proclaim the dawn of a new era.

His good wife, seeing her husband vanish from the house shouting wild slogans of revolution and the fall of the state, did not share in his triumph. Fearing the worst, she hurried to the authorities. In a blink, the gendarmes arrived—the modern-day constables of that distant land—and surrounded the premises with a grim determination.

They cornered the wretched man in his own garden, huddled near a cedar tree. As the circle of law closed in, the old man, in a fit of desperation, unleashed a volley of lead. Two gendarmes were struck in the legs, felled by the sudden fire. The old fool himself did not escape unscathed; a bullet found its mark in his own flesh. Bleeding and broken, he scrambled into the darkness of his cellar, like a cornered rat in a slum. There, the officers finally apprehended him, and he was carted off to the hospital, leaving behind only the smell of gunpowder and the wreckage of a delusional dream.