There was a cool breeze and I could hear nothing but the soft, rhythmic lull of the sea somewhere in the distance. Occasionally a dog would bark or a car would drive slowly past. It was so different to Monte Carlo and of course to London too. There was nothing here but a few apartments, a couple of chaotically parked cars and the ocean; that vast nothingness of water teeming with all kinds of hidden life, and the beyond it, somewhere in the distance, much further than my eyes could dare focus, was Africa. I remembered flying out to Nice from London and looking down over the green fields and tiny little towns and I felt so insignificant; and here, with only the ocean in front of me, I felt so very much as if I was the only person in the world. The fluctuation between significance and insignificance was startling, owed in part to my own feeling of seclusion. I wasn’t with my friends now, nor was I even with my enemies, and I couldn’t speak a word of French. But curiously, I didn’t feel at all scared, or worried, or anything really. I remembered back to a...