In the quiet hours before dawn on the French Riviera, two figures slipped into the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer and carried away pieces of a civilization's memory. Though police arrived within minutes and two of the four stolen paintings were recovered in the garden, the episode reminds us that cultural heritage — however housed in stone and glass — remains vulnerable to the oldest of human impulses. The theft, coming a year after crown jewels vanished from the Louvre, asks a question France cannot yet answer: who is truly keeping watch over what belongs to everyone?