The first story is terribly sad, but the second has a happy ending.

On the île de Ré, on the French Atlantic coast, the town of Saint Martin features a superb fortress conceived by Vauban and a lovely port, used today by pleasure craft. The port is ringed by open-air restaurants that as a rule are filled with diners every day, throughout the summer. On a recent Sunday evening, a couple took their grandson to dinner. Around 8:00 pm, the boy left the table to play by the port. Then he disappeared.

The grandparents realized that the boy had disappeared when they paid their bill. They alerted the gendarmes at 9:15 pm, and around 10:00 pm a group of 15 gendarmes started searching for the boy. At 7:45 Monday morning, the boy's body was found, three to four meters underneath a pontoon in the port.

In the Bouches-du-Rhône, in the town of Eygalières, a band of happy children arrived Monday evening at the grandparents' farmhouse. Around 8:00 pm, two-year-old Gauthier disappeared. His worried grandparents alerted the authorities. The gendarmes called up 36 men, and the fire department added another 36 men. A reconnaissance plane with infrared cameras was readied, as was a helicopter.

Around 9:00 the following morning, Gauthier turned up, near the farmhouse. He hadn't gone far, and suffered no injury more severe than a scratch.

In both cases, the child was said to have disappeared. This is false: children do not become invisible or vanish. The circumstances were more likely: grandparents were distracted or not used to having young charges; children were away from their parents, in a novel setting. Something or someone wandered: maybe it was the grandparents' attention, maybe it was the child.

And in both cases, law enforcement seems to be playing a numbers game, throwing large numbers of men at a problem, with no result. Partly this reflects a too-quick suspicion of foul play. But mostly it demonstrates a vain struggle to overcome the asset most quickly lost in a search: time.