Fernand LΘvΩque sat in the front row at the wedding, which was being held in a garden near Budapest. The 69-year-old widower and retired car-factory worker shed tears as his son Thierry, a journalist, and his Hungarian daughter-in-law, Andrea, said their vows for the second time - he had missed the first ceremony in France a year earlier.
Then he quaffed champagne, celebrated until three o'clock in the morning, enjoyed two days of tourism and flew back to Paris. It was hard to believe that LΘvΩque nearly died from a malignant tumour in his intestine on the day Thierry and Andrea held their first civil ceremony in France. Now he smiles when he mentions his "miraculous recovery". "I have the impression that my life started over," he says. "It's a gift from science; the gift of surgery."
On the night of September 15th last year, LΘvΩque, who was living in the eastern French city of Belfort, stayed with family friends in Paris. He vomited repeatedly and lost consciousness. An ambulance rushed him to Saint-Louis Hospital, where he was operated on by a female surgeon, Dr Laurence Cahen-Douady, who removed the tumour blocking his intestine. (Close to 60 per cent of entry-level medical students in France are women.)
On the afternoon of September 16th, Thierry and Andrea went straight from their marriage at the mairie of the 19th arrondissement to the intensive-care ward, where LΘvΩque remained in a coma for nine days. When he woke up, he did not remember his departure from Belfort.
LΘvΩque's experience was typical of French healthcare. La SΘcu, as social-security is informally known in France, allows patients to consult as many doctors as they wish.
LΘvΩque's only previous illness was depression, but he'd complained of severe constipation for two years. He collapsed once, while visiting his wife's grave, and haemorrhaged from the nose and mouth. Yet a GP and two specialists in Belfort failed to diagnose cancer - the quality of care in the provinces is notoriously inferior to that in Paris. Scanners that might have detected LΘvΩque's tumour did not arrive in Belfort until this year.
LΘvΩque began working as an apprentice hand modeller of car parts at the age of 14, and took early retirement at 54. In the intervening 40 years, his monthly social-security payments were insuring him against illness. His mutuelle - a non-profit private insurance company - paid the percentage not covered by la SΘcu. "My father received the same treatment as the director of a big company, or a millionaire," says Thierry. "For that level of equality, France is unbeatable."
LΘvΩque's private hospital room for three months at Saint-Louis - not counting ambulances, doctors' fees, medication and nursing - would have cost 450,000 francs (£54,029) if the LΘvΩques had to pay for it. He then had six months of chemotherapy treatment at Forcilles, outside Paris. The family paid nothing.
Over the past three years, all French people have received a Carte Vitale, which looks like a credit card and contains the patient's medical records on a microchip. The cards are meant to reduce la SΘcu's legendary mountains of paperwork.
Doctors and civil servants are resisting the innovation, and despite his father's Carte Vitale, Thierry LΘvΩque spent hours queuing and filling out forms at Saint-Louis Hospital.
Father and son say they were impressed by the devotion of staff at Saint-Louis. "In France, people who work for the government are well paid; doctors are proud to work for the system," says Thierry. "I've heard that in Britain and elsewhere, only third-class doctors work in public hospitals."