After the blood, bandages and wreckage were cleared away yesterday morning, a small black mark and a chink in the giant cement column were the only signs of the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, her millionaire playboy friend, Dodi al-Fayed, and their driver.
The shock wave that went round the world seemed to dwarf the chip in the concrete. If it weren't for the pile of flowers in the middle of the 50-metre-long tunnel and the police barriers holding back the curious and the grieving at the entrance, no one would have suspected anything unusual.
French commentators noted that Diana lived fast, loved fast and died fast. But the manner of the princess's death had an unreal, storybook quality about it.
The couple had dined not at any ordinary bistro, but at the Ritz Hotel - owned by Dodi's father, Mohamed al-Fayed - in the magnificent 17th-century Place Vendome. It was their third romantic weekend in Paris; on previous trips Diana had stayed in the Ritz's £6,000-a-night Imperial Suite, where her golden, canopied bed was a copy of Marie-Antoinette's bed at Versailles and her bathroom was furnished in marble and antique oak.
The photo agencies - perhaps in self-defence - later claimed the couple were cheerful and friendly with the paparazzi when they came out of the Ritz at 12:30 yesterday morning. So it is possible that the hot pursuit which was to kill three people, including the princess, started as a goodnatured game.
The chauffeur-driven Mercedes crossed the Place de la Concorde and turned right, following the Right Bank of the Seine towards the 18th-century mansion in the Bois de Boulogne once owned by Prince Charles's great-uncle, Edward VIII, and Wallis Simpson, Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Mohamed al-Fayed owns it, too, and the tabloids reported that Diana hoped to live there.
The Egyptian billionaire promised to preserve its contents, then angered the public by deciding to auction them at Sotheby's next month. Apparently Diana wanted to furnish the house with her own belongings.
The black Mercedes accelerated as it started down the straight, smooth stretch of the Right Bank, where the legal speed limit is 50 kmph. But the car reportedly reached a speed of 180 kmph and as it entered the short tunnel with the motorcycles of the paparazzi still buzzing around it, the driver lost control. The Mercedes bounced off the walls of the tunnel before smashing upside down into one of the concrete central support columns which separate the two sides of the highway.
The driver and Dodi al-Fayed were killed instantly, crushed by the weight of the engine. The paparazzi stopped to take pictures of the horrific accident, but were soon arrested. Rescue workers spent 40 minutes trying to care for Diana as she was pinned under the wreckage, then took more than an hour to cut her and her severely injured British bodyguard out of the debris.
She was then taken by ambulance to the PitieSalpetriere Hospital in the 13th arrondissement, where high-ranking French officials are usually cared for. She was haemorrhaging massively from internal chest injuries and suffered a heart attack. Despite a heart massage, the princess died on the operating table at 4 a.m.
The world was so obsessed with Diana that there was little mention of Dodi alFayed, the unnamed driver and injured bodyguard - a former British soldier, Trevor Rees-Jones, reported last night to be recovering. Dodi's grieving father, Mohamed al-Fayed, was one of the few who remembered the accident's other victims in his comments.
Early today, it was reported in Paris that the driver of the car, identified only as a Monsieur Paul was the deputy head of security at the Ritz - not a trained chauffeur familiar with the power of a Mercedes 600.