‘Paris is not very far and I hope, next week, to make an entrance there which would reward me for the painful efforts that I have made during this time. I got a reprieve for my 28 regimental days, which I should be doing right now. I would be happy to prove to the military authorities that I did well to ask them this favour by conquering the gates of Paris.’
So wrote Lucien Petit-Breton in his column for the weekly journal La Vie au Grand Air, four stages from the end of the 1908 Tour de France.
Petit-Breton had enjoyed a
