In 1965, in the French town of Arles, a 90-year-old woman named Jeanne Calment made a deal that looked like a gift to the other side.

She finally died in 1997, at 122 years and 164 days old, the longest verified human life in history. By then, Raffray and his family had paid more than double the apartment’s worth.

Calment, sharp to the very end, summed it up perfectly. “In life,” she said, “one sometimes makes bad deals.”