Toulouse enters the narrative through Aurélie’s account of a previous woman whom the man stalking her had pursued for years. The city is not presented through a scene set there; instead, it anchors a history of persistent harassment, legal intervention, and displacement that makes his threats against Aurélie more than empty words.

The Earlier Stalking Episode

A few years before Aurélie’s account, the man had fixed his attention on a young woman in Toulouse. He lived with her for a week, then continued pursuing her for five years, without giving up. The account offers no further description of the woman or of the places in the city where the events unfolded; Toulouse is identified as the setting of this earlier episode and as the point of origin for a pattern that would later recur elsewhere.

Legal Consequences and Departure

The pursuit led to three prison terms: one of six months, another of nine months, and a third period of six months in a psychiatric hospital. The justice system ultimately barred him from returning to the département. He then settled in Metz, where he met Aurélie. That relocation links the earlier Toulouse history to the present danger: the man’s change of city did not mark an end to his pursuit of women.

Role in Aurélie’s Account

Aurélie recounts the Toulouse episode while describing the man’s insistence that she would eventually love him and build a life with him. His disclosure that he had pursued another woman for years, and that legal sanctions had followed, gives those claims a threatening context. The story moves from a history in Toulouse to the man’s renewed pursuit in Metz, while the listeners at the clinic respond in silence and visible compassion. Toulouse thus functions as the remembered precedent that reveals the persistence and consequences of his behavior.