Chatelet RER station is at the heart of Paris where all the train lines cross. At rush hours there are hoards of people coming and going. The trains are full and a klaxon sounds when the doors are about to close.  I could have taken the next train, except that it would have been even more crowded. Then suddenly I saw running towards me the largest and most forbidding son of Africa I’d ever seen since Foreman fought Ali in Kinshasa. He was charging straight at me, and looking right at me, and in his hand he was holding something that looked like it was aimed at my chest. The klaxon continued, as I prayed for the doors to close, feeling right then as if I was surely about to die. But the man, with his blue cloak billowing behind him managed to reach me, and as he stretched out his arm, the doors were closing, but he’d arrived just in time …. to give me back my wallet!