Over at Quadrant, the good doctor returns to an overcrowded and increasingly shabby Paris and is confronted with illegal migrant squatters, bedbugs, rats, and the looming Olympic Games, “that festival of stupid international rivalry.”

Returning to Paris after an absence of only a few months, I was dismayed by the deterioration it seemed to have undergone in that short time. It struck me as dirty and grossly overcrowded, while the mayor has for a long time been doing everything possible to reduce the city’s beauty in the name of saving the planet. In the former, at least, she is succeeding.