Monsieur Virgule met un point d'honneur à s'opposer à la suspension des Bouquinistes de Paris

What a great idea! The opening parade of the Olympic Games on the Seine, what a journey rich in culture! Imagine these athletes, heirs of Homer whose Iliad, the inaugural novel of Western History, includes the first mention of the sporting games organized by Achilles; imagine them running along the river, over which reigns Poseidon who, according to the writings of Greek historians, ensured the first victory of the Games by offering Pelops a golden chariot and winged horses... Wouldn't Pierre de Coubertin have been happy who, in the name of education and knowledge, announced the rebirth of the Olympic Games in the great amphitheater of the Sorbonne?

The history of the Games is closely linked to culture and no city can illustrate this complicity better than Paris, the world capital of the arts, whose highest cultural sites border the Seine: the Eiffel Tower, the Palais de Chaillot, the Modern Art, the Orsay Museum, the Louvre, the Grand Palais, the Quai Branly, the Monnaie de Paris, the School of Fine Arts, the Institut du Monde Arabe, the Institute of France, the House of Voltaire, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Cité de la Mode, the BNF... and, of course, the Bouquinistes who, preceding most of these monuments, installed their green boxes on the quays in 1859, the year when erected the late Notre-Dame spire!

Aware that the main purpose of organizing the Olympic Games is to honor Paris and its identity as well as to promote quality tourism, the organizers will, this is certain, plan to highlight these incomparable republican symbols – listed in the French intangible cultural heritage – what are the colorful stalls of second-hand booksellers… No ?   The booksellers of Paris do not give up and follow in the footsteps of Hubert Bouccara, to protest against the withdrawal of our colleagues second-hand booksellers along the Seine!