*As articles about Bernard covered page after page of the press in those years, a younger, far less renowned confrère made a brief appearance in the breaking news bulletins of the national media on August 9, 1984. On that day, a twenty-seven-year-old chef named Alain Ducasse, who had two Michelin stars for his seaside restaurant at Juan-les-Pins, near Nice, survived a crash in the Alps that killed all four others aboard the light plane carrying them to the ski resort of Courchevel. After fourteen operations and nearly a year in a wheelchair, convinced that nothing worse could ever befall him, Ducasse plunged headlong into challenge after audacious challenge, building the meteoric career that saw him win three stars simultaneously in two different restaurants as he built an astonishingly successful international empire. Ducasse’s brilliant career became a persistent source of worry and envy for Bernard in later years, when he fell into his deepest doldrums of self-doubt: Perhaps it was this other guy who was the best, after all.