Albert Camus described the Absurd as the clash between humankind’s longing for meaning and the world’s refusal to give it. We search for reason, order and justice, but the universe responds with silence and coincidence. The Absurd is not despair; it is theatre. And last week, the Louvre became its stage.On a quiet October morning, the world’s most visited museum was robbed in plain sight. Four masked men arrived by the Seine with the precision of engineers and the arrogance of artists. They climbed a ladder into the Galerie d’Apollon, smashed two display cases, and in less than five minutes stole eight royal and imperial treasures: the Sapphire Parure of Queen Marie-Amélie, the Emerald Necklace of Empress Marie-Louise, and the diamond tiara of Empress Eugénie among them. Then they vanished through the streets of Paris on scooters, leaving behind glass, dust and disbelief.These weren’t just ornaments. They were fragments of France’s identity. Marie-Amélie’s sapphire tiara was the last shimmer of a monarchy trying to appear legitimate in its twilight. Marie-Louise’s emerald necklace was Napoleon’s promise of renewal. Eugénie’s diamond diadem and bodice knot embodied the splendour and vanity of the Second Empire. The reliquary brooch, once said to hold a saint’s relic, represented the divine approval that kings once claimed.Even the crime scene had symbolism. The Galerie d’Apollon, built for Louis XIV, was meant to glorify the Sun King and later to display the crown jewels as proof that France’s brilliance was eternal. To rob that gallery was to rob the idea of continuity itself.After the theft, Louvre director Laurence des Cars called it a “terrible failure” and offered to resign. The culture minister refused her resignation and ordered an inquiry, defending the museum’s security while promising transparency. It was the familiar rhythm of bureaucracy: ritual contrition, procedural calm, and little consolation.
Yet, the image that captured the world’s imagination had nothing to do with the jewels.Thibault Camus, a photographer for the Associated Press, was documenting the police cordon outside the Louvre. His photograph showed three policemen beside a silver car, and on the right edge, a sharply dressed man in a fedora and waistcoat. He looked like he had stepped out of a 1940s film. Within hours, the picture was everywhere.Social media turned the stranger into “the detective on the case.” Memes christened him the Fedora Detective, the last stylish Frenchman. Some insisted he was AI-generated. His skin looked too perfect, his pose too composed, his presence too cinematic. In an age trained to distrust its own eyes, he seemed too beautiful to be real.Experts even analysed the photo’s resolution, arguing about shadows and pixel depth. It was absurd in the truest Camusian sense: a real man mistaken for a digital illusion, a photograph mistaken for fiction.Thibault Camus later confirmed the truth. The man was real, not a detective, probably just a passer-by. “I don’t know him,” the photographer said. “Maybe he’s a tourist. Maybe English.” He added that the man looked “old-fashioned, like a museum can be.”And that was that. A man who shares his surname with the philosopher who taught the world to accept meaninglessness had, without intending to, captured the Absurd in motion. The coincidence is almost too poetic: a Camus photographing a moment that Albert Camus might have written—a stranger in a hat, detached from the chaos, calmly existing as meaning collapses around him.Albert Camus once wrote that one must imagine Sisyphus happy, content to roll his boulder forever. The fedora man, standing still as history unravels, is that smile made flesh. He resists nothing, explains nothing, but in his calm becomes the only point of clarity in the entire farce.Meanwhile, investigators continue their work. DNA traces on gloves, scooter tracks by the river, a single relic recovered: the crown of Empress Eugénie, found dented near the museum gates. The rest of the jewels remain missing, perhaps melted, perhaps hidden. France promises recovery, but the photograph has already done its work.It captures the age better than any report could. A museum robbed of its past, a nation robbed of certainty, and a stranger mistaken for meaning. The thieves took history; Camus captured irony.Somewhere in Paris, the man in the fedora may have seen his own face on a meme and shrugged. The jewels remain gone. The Absurd, as always, remains.One imagines him happy.
