You know, I have always been fascinated by curious coincidences

You know, I have always been fascinated by curious coincidences. Take, for instance, the robbery of the Louvre. Grand, bold, sweeping in scale! In places even funny, and tragicomic.

They made off with the most precious treasures, bedecked with all manner of diamonds and sapphires. And France's Minister of Culture, Madame Rachida Dati, it turns out, is a collector of jewellery. A collector? Well, not merely a lady with three amber necklaces from her grandmother and an alpaca-silver bracelet from a flea market, but neither the foremost gatherer in her diamond line of the sceptres of Odoacer. Just some undeclared rings, watches, what is known as joaillerie de luxe, worth perhaps 500-600 thousand euros, and even that only if one believes the vile insinuations against the most honest servants of papers and forms.

And so I wonder: how, pray, is her collection kept? Perhaps also somewhere under glass, but with no alarm and no guard, which is to say, practically under the mattress? Or, on the contrary, behind three lines of defence, as in the citadel of the Atreides or with a nuclear briefcase, with a code, a fingerprint, a retina scan and a birthmark in the shape of a royal fleur-de-lis?

Now tell me: could a person moving in the world of collectresses of compact masterpieces by Cartier and Chopard, even out of the corner of an ear, purely in theory, know someone who knows someone who once remarked in passing, "And are your diamonds insured?"

Life, however you look at it, is art. And art, as we know, demands a regime of humidity and good security. The trouble is that with security we always have order, whereas with humidity they only set to work when they begin to sweat awkwardly.