THREE subjects that are the talk of the town here these days are about a dozen or so mysterious drones, an enigmatic third man and a tiger that is supposedly roaming free in a forest east of Paris.

The drones were noticed, some even photographed, buzzing around various nuclear electricity plants during recent weeks. There is a great deal of excitement over this but so far no explanation has been offered by official sources or from experts.

Then there is the third man who last week suddenly stepped out from a dark corner into the limelight, not much different from the character played by Orson Welles in the 1949 film of the same title.

The scandal began when the book, Sarkozy Killed Himself, authored by two Le Monde reporters came out early this month disclosing that former prime minister Francois Fillon, during a lunch with the Elysee Palace Secretary General Jean-Pierre Jouyet, had advised him to ‘hit quick, hit hard and break the legs’ of former president Nicolas Sarkozy before he manages to come back to power.

After publicly denying that any such conversation ever took place, Jouyet finally admitted that in fact Fillon had urged him during their one-on-one lunch at a restaurant to create obstacles in Sarkozy’s way in his bid to win the 2017 presidential election.

Soon came a twist to the tale. Antoine Gosset-Granville, director of the cabinet for Fillon during his prime minister’s term in 2007-2010 under Sarkozy, made a public statement saying there was a third man at the table during the lunch — none else but Gosset-Granville himself.

While the three men have continued appearing on TV talk shows practically every day since the scandal broke, total confusion prevails as to who said what. But one thing is certain: the incident is proving to be a windfall for Sarkozy whose popularity ratings have shot up as the latest opinion polls.

And now walks in the tiger. A couple traversing the forest near the small town of Montevrain during Nov 13 night had stopped for a rest. Suddenly they saw a tiger on top of a hill. Without daring to come out of the car the woman took out her smartphone and took a picture. The couple then drove up to the nearest police station and showed their photo to the inspector.

The first thing the police did was to call up zoos and circuses within a radius of 50 kms to check if any of their tigers had gone missing. Reassuring calls came back afterwards indicating all tigers were safe and resting in their cages.

Soldiers were, nevertheless, deployed and a military helicopter, armed with tranquiliser guns and powerful searchlights, began frantically searching for the dangerous beast in the wooded area.

The next step was telephone calls to all parents in the town advising them to drive their children to their schools or wait until the school bus stopped at their doorsteps. “Never, never allow your kids to go to school walking,” they were told. Armed policemen were also posted at school entrances.

So far there has been no satisfying answer to any of these three mysteries. Who sent up those drones circling over the nuclear power plants? Was it for spying purposes or simply for fun? Is the third man telling the truth or is he also part of a sinister political plot? Is there a blood-thirsty tiger stalking the forest for its next victim or is it no more than a cellphone image of a cat enhanced by the rays of a magical full moon?

Le Figaro magazine carried an in-depth study on these issues recently with the portrait of a dejected-looking Fillon on the cover. The consensus among the intellectuals appears to be that the public is so bored with daily stories about higher taxes, declining growth rate, rising unemployment , discontentment among factory workers and weekly strikes, that it has started getting excited over such far-fetched scandals.

While the mysterious drones keep humming over the nuclear plants, the third man stays fuddled over what is true and what is false and a ferocious beast goes maundering along valleys and hills, it would only be apt to end by quoting William Blake’s poem titled The Tyger:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright In the forest of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The writer is a journalist based in Paris

ZafMasud@gmail.com