just passed away: the man was amazing, his career a legend [1,2]. My "journey with Nicola" will seem tiny and frivolous to most; its only value is a testimony proving the progressive and shared conscience of the importance of a unique piece of work and a piece of art as well. This has been important to our specialty and for any kind of serious medical research. In this regard, I have been kind of suspicious for a long time, and became fully aware of having been wrong, like most of us for example in France. Do we need to apologize for that? Definitely yes, but at the same time we need to examine in detail an opera magna that has been a tremendous breakthrough and still is an incentive to think beyond the ordinary.This voyage is far from over, and concerns the whole bariatric community, those who are questing for the best long-term result, as well as those (like me) who would love to overcome the antagonism between malabsorption and restriction … but do not know how! J. Dargent (*) Polyclinique de Rillieux, 65, rue des Contamines,