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policy changes. I was courteous, well-mannered, well-liked by colleagues and superiors. My temperament, however, was less than warm and I had failed to make any real friends. Night was falling quickly over Lisieux. Why, in my work, had I never shown a passion comparable to Marie-Jeanne's? Why had I never shown any real passion in my life in general?
    Several more weeks went by without bringing me an answer. Then, on the morning of December 23, I took a taxi to Roissy airport.

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    And now, there I was, on my own like an idiot, a few feet from the Nouvelles Frontières desk. It was a Saturday morning during the Christmas holidays. Roissy was heaving, as usual. The minute they have a couple of days of freedom, the inhabitants of Western Europe dash off to the other side of the world, they go halfway around the world in a plane, they behave —literally—like escaped convicts. I couldn't blame them, since I was preparing to do just that.
    My dreams are run-of-the-mill. Like all of the inhabitants of Western Europe, I want to  travel . There are problems with that, of course, including the language barrier, poorly organized public transport, the risk of being robbed or conned. Therefore, to put it more bluntly, what I really want, basically, is to be a tourist . We dream what dreams we can afford; and my dream is to go on an endless series of "Romantic Getaways," "Colorful Expeditions," and "Pleasures à la Carte" —to use the titles of the three Nouvelles Frontières brochures.
    I immediately decided to go on a package tour, but I hesitated quite a bit between "Rum and Salsa" (ref: CUB CO 033, 16 days/14 nights, 11,250 francs for a double, singles an additional 1,350 francs) and "Thai Tropic" (ref: THA CA 006,15 days/13 nights, 9,950 francs for a double, singles an additional 1,175 francs). Actually, I was more attracted by Thailand; but the advantage of Cuba is that it's one of the last Communist countries, and probably not for much longer, so it has a sort of "endangered régime" appeal, a sort of political exoticism, to put it in a nutshell. In the end, I chose Thailand. I have to admit that the copy in the brochure was very well done, sure to tempt the average browser:
    A package tour with a dash of adventure that will take you from the bamboo forests of the River Kwai to the island of Ko Samui, winding up, after crossing the spectacular Isthmus of Kra, at Ko Phi Phi. off the coast of Phuket. A cool trip to the tropics.
    At 8:30 a.m. on the dot, Jacques Maillot slams the door of his house on the Boulevard Blanqui in the 13th arrondissement, straddles his moped, and begins a journey across the capital from east to west. His destination: the head office of Nouvelles Frontières on the Boulevard de Grenelle. Every other day, he stops at four or five of the company's agencies: "I bring them the latest brochures, I pick up the mail, and generally take a temperature reading," explains the boss, always vibrant, always sporting an extraordinary multicolored tie. It's a crack of the whip for the agents: "There's always a tremendous boost in sales immediately after I visit each agency," he explains with a smile. Visibly under his spell, the journalist from Capital goes on to marvel: who could have predicted in 1967 that a small business set up by a handful of student protesters would take off like this? Certainly not the thousands of demonstrators who, in May 1968, marched past the first Nouvelles Frontières office on the Place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris. "We were in just the right place, right in front of the cameras," remembers Jacques Maillot, a former Boy Scout and left-wing Catholic by way of the National Students Union. It was the first piece of publicity for the company, which took its name from John F. Kennedy's speech about America's "New Frontier."
    A passionate liberal, Jacques Maillot successfully fought the Air France monopoly, making air transport more accessible to all. His company's odyssey, which in thirty