A young man of rare elegance has been the talk of the town since the Louvre robbery. Spotted by chance in a press photo in the hours following the heist, he boldly sports a felt hat, waistcoat, and tie, which he wears with noble confidence and that certain je ne sais quoi that is the unmistakable mark of men who instinctively know what class is.
His presence at the scene was fortuitous, but nothing in life is entirely by chance: the fifteen-year-old, who lives in the Yvelines, is an admirer of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, those detectives of yesteryear with their finely turned-up moustaches and impeccably starched shirts.
The reason the boy attracted so much press coverage and admiring posts on social media before his identity was discovered was that he perfectly embodied the imaginary world that so many of us cherish, as depicted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Maurice Leblanc, and which the incredible Louvre burglary brought back to life. A bygone world where Arsène Lupin, nicknamed the ‘gentleman thief,’ roamed the rooftops of Paris in white tie, pursued by equally elegant sleuths.
Unfortunately, it is time to stop fantasising. The elegant man of the Louvre is one of the last survivors of his kind, and today we can no longer count on criminals like Arsène Lupin or John Robie to fascinate us.
The investigation into the theft of the crown jewels is progressing, and we now know the name of one of the perpetrators: ‘Doudou Cross Bitume.’ That’s not very chic.
‘Doudou Cross Bitume’ is the nickname of Abdoulaye N., 39, a repeat offender known on social media for his motocross performance videos. He parades on TikTok and Instagram with the thunderous slogan ‘The Legend of Cross Bitume 93 Aubervilliers’ and boasts over 700,000 views for some of his videos. Yes, you read that right; this is the man responsible for the disappearance of Queen Hortense’s jewellery and Empress Eugénie’s corsage bow. Doudou Cross Bitume is to Emmanuel Macron’s France in 2025 what Arsène Lupin was to Emile Loubet’s France in 1905. There is a sense of decadence in this sad affair. France has fallen so low that it is no longer even worthy of having stylish criminals. This further reinforces the sense of national outrage that surrounds this terrible burglary.
Everything about this affair reeks of mediocrity and the end of an era. All it took was a goods lift (German-made, what a shame!) and an angle grinder to steal royal jewels on a Sunday morning, right under the noses of tourists. We learn that among the gang of criminals behind the theft are a suspect of Algerian nationality and a Franco-Malian—the kind of people who make the headlines every day for their multiple petty crimes involving drugs or pickpocketing. Amateurs: they left no fewer than 150 traces of DNA at the scene.
But on the Louvre’s side, the scenario is just as bad. There is no security system like the ones in Entrapment that gave Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones such a hard time. The investigation revealed that the security system of the so-called ‘world’s greatest museum’ ran on computers operating on Windows 2000 or XP, which means that every day, alarms about IT security breaches were blaring without anyone paying any attention. The software was obsolete and impossible to update. To top it all off, the system password was simply “LOUVRE.” It could just as easily have been ‘0000,’ like the good old Nokia phones in the early 2000s.
All this might seem like a bad joke if it weren’t such a tragedy. To date, the gang of incompetents who stole the jewellery may have been dismantled, but the jewellery itself remains untraceable. At the time of writing, it is even possible that the pieces have already been dismantled, scattered, and thus irretrievably lost—all for the sake of giving a few sinister-looking individuals, who are normally more accustomed to stealing smartphones and selling cannabis than historical jewellery, a rush of adrenaline.
But despite all this, to quote the famous refrain by singer Maurice Chevalier, who shared Arsène Lupin’s taste for bowties and top hats, “tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise, tout va très bien” (everything is fine, Madame la Marquise, everything is fine). As the song says:
We regret one tiny thing
If the stable burned down, madam
It’s because the castle was on fire
But apart from that, Madame la Marquise
Everything is fine, everything is fine
The windows of the Louvre don’t close, the computers are buggy, the cameras are broken, but everything is fine. Today’s Marquises are Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture; Laurence des Cars, Director of the Louvre; and Dominique Buffin, Head of Security. They are doing very well and have no intention of resigning over this fiasco. Across the Channel, after the revelations about Donald Trump’s doctored video, BBC executives at least had the good taste to bow out and leave the stage. It’s a little painful for a French woman to write this, but on this point, we must admit that the British do things better.
New Revelations on the Louvre Heist: A Very Bad Joke
The “parure de la reine Marie-Amelie et de la Reine Hortense” (set of jewelry of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense) displayed at Apollon’s Gallery on January 14, 2020 at the Louvre museum in Paris—one of the priceless pieces stolen in the October 20 heist.
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
You may also like
A Confused Strasbourg Footballer Scores Globalism’s Own Goal
Previously strong links between the men on the terraces and the men on the pitch have gradually withered as random global citizens began replacing homegrown heroes.
Hungary: Scapegoat for Western European Failure
When ‘liberal democracy’ becomes a suicide pact for one’s nation, you should not be surprised when people living in that nation prefer something different.
Euthanasia Isn’t Care: How the UK Abandons the Chronically Mentally Ill
As a person living with treatment-resistant depression, the author asks, “Does the government have the right to determine what qualifies as a ‘good life’?”
A young man of rare elegance has been the talk of the town since the Louvre robbery. Spotted by chance in a press photo in the hours following the heist, he boldly sports a felt hat, waistcoat, and tie, which he wears with noble confidence and that certain je ne sais quoi that is the unmistakable mark of men who instinctively know what class is.
His presence at the scene was fortuitous, but nothing in life is entirely by chance: the fifteen-year-old, who lives in the Yvelines, is an admirer of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, those detectives of yesteryear with their finely turned-up moustaches and impeccably starched shirts.
The reason the boy attracted so much press coverage and admiring posts on social media before his identity was discovered was that he perfectly embodied the imaginary world that so many of us cherish, as depicted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Maurice Leblanc, and which the incredible Louvre burglary brought back to life. A bygone world where Arsène Lupin, nicknamed the ‘gentleman thief,’ roamed the rooftops of Paris in white tie, pursued by equally elegant sleuths.
Unfortunately, it is time to stop fantasising. The elegant man of the Louvre is one of the last survivors of his kind, and today we can no longer count on criminals like Arsène Lupin or John Robie to fascinate us.
The investigation into the theft of the crown jewels is progressing, and we now know the name of one of the perpetrators: ‘Doudou Cross Bitume.’ That’s not very chic.
‘Doudou Cross Bitume’ is the nickname of Abdoulaye N., 39, a repeat offender known on social media for his motocross performance videos. He parades on TikTok and Instagram with the thunderous slogan ‘The Legend of Cross Bitume 93 Aubervilliers’ and boasts over 700,000 views for some of his videos. Yes, you read that right; this is the man responsible for the disappearance of Queen Hortense’s jewellery and Empress Eugénie’s corsage bow. Doudou Cross Bitume is to Emmanuel Macron’s France in 2025 what Arsène Lupin was to Emile Loubet’s France in 1905. There is a sense of decadence in this sad affair. France has fallen so low that it is no longer even worthy of having stylish criminals. This further reinforces the sense of national outrage that surrounds this terrible burglary.
Everything about this affair reeks of mediocrity and the end of an era. All it took was a goods lift (German-made, what a shame!) and an angle grinder to steal royal jewels on a Sunday morning, right under the noses of tourists. We learn that among the gang of criminals behind the theft are a suspect of Algerian nationality and a Franco-Malian—the kind of people who make the headlines every day for their multiple petty crimes involving drugs or pickpocketing. Amateurs: they left no fewer than 150 traces of DNA at the scene.
But on the Louvre’s side, the scenario is just as bad. There is no security system like the ones in Entrapment that gave Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones such a hard time. The investigation revealed that the security system of the so-called ‘world’s greatest museum’ ran on computers operating on Windows 2000 or XP, which means that every day, alarms about IT security breaches were blaring without anyone paying any attention. The software was obsolete and impossible to update. To top it all off, the system password was simply “LOUVRE.” It could just as easily have been ‘0000,’ like the good old Nokia phones in the early 2000s.
All this might seem like a bad joke if it weren’t such a tragedy. To date, the gang of incompetents who stole the jewellery may have been dismantled, but the jewellery itself remains untraceable. At the time of writing, it is even possible that the pieces have already been dismantled, scattered, and thus irretrievably lost—all for the sake of giving a few sinister-looking individuals, who are normally more accustomed to stealing smartphones and selling cannabis than historical jewellery, a rush of adrenaline.
But despite all this, to quote the famous refrain by singer Maurice Chevalier, who shared Arsène Lupin’s taste for bowties and top hats, “tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise, tout va très bien” (everything is fine, Madame la Marquise, everything is fine). As the song says:
The windows of the Louvre don’t close, the computers are buggy, the cameras are broken, but everything is fine. Today’s Marquises are Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture; Laurence des Cars, Director of the Louvre; and Dominique Buffin, Head of Security. They are doing very well and have no intention of resigning over this fiasco. Across the Channel, after the revelations about Donald Trump’s doctored video, BBC executives at least had the good taste to bow out and leave the stage. It’s a little painful for a French woman to write this, but on this point, we must admit that the British do things better.
Our community starts with you
READ NEXT
Euthanasia Isn’t Care: How the UK Abandons the Chronically Mentally Ill
Brussels Burns, the Countryside Holds the Line
The Hit Job on Farage: Handing Him the Keys to Number 10