Two Illegal Immigrants Were Granted Permits to Live and Work in France After Saving a Man's Life.

They were sleeping rough, as they had done every night since they arrived in France. From beneath the canal bridge, they heard the splash, and the screams. They jumped in, dragged the young man to the bank, emptied his lungs and helped him home.

Three months later, two 25-year-old illegal immigrants from Guinea, with neither homes nor jobs, were granted permits to live and work in France "in consideration of their exceptional courage and human kindness".

A week after a Dunkirk lorry driver shot dead a Moroccan youth, and a deranged adolescent doused a north African girl with petrol and set her on fire, it is a story that has warmed a country chilled, of late, by some horrific examples of racial intolerance.

Cyril Lenoir, 22, who is mentally handicapped, was walking by the canal in the north-eastern town of Saint-Quentin when a dog lunged at him. His first instinct was to jump into the water. N'Famara Bangoura and Mustapha Keita, who arrived in France 18 months ago, hauled him out and saw him home to the village of Nauroy. Cyril's father, Joel, and mother, Nadine, gave them a meal and offered them money, which they refused.

"It was when they turned down my offer of a lift back to Saint-Quentin that I understood," said Mr Lenoir. "They had nowhere to go. I offered them a bed in the spare room. They had saved my son, it was as if they had saved me. They told me later it was the first bed they had slept in since they got to France."

The Lenoirs took the Guineans in and promised to help them get their papers. "Never," said Mr Bangoura, "did I imagine I would be received like a son in a white man's house."

This weekend Mr Boungara and Mr Keita got their papers, and medals for bravery, at a presentation in a packed village hall in Nauroy, where they are the only African residents. There was - reported the press - not a dry eye to be seen.