The day after the flame inferno, the Parisians stare wordlessly at black stones, on the burnt-out roof of Notre-Dame, lying on the neighboring Ile St. Louis still hundreds of meters of fire hoses on the ground. People do not cry anymore, but they do not talk much on this very gray, very sad Tuesday.
The European election campaign has been suspended since the fire, and the conservative Republicans said a planned big meeting in Nîmes during the night. Nathalie Loiseau, the leading candidate of the ruling party "La République en Marche", canceled all upcoming election campaign dates in the morning. Even the otherwise lumbering leftist and former Marxist Jean-Luc Mélenchon demanded a 24-hour political break: "This building is like a family member to us, at the moment we are all in mourning."
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Fire in Notre-Dame: mission at the cathedralTime stands still, as after a terrorist attack - the Parisians know this, and yet everything is different this time.
Because there are no culprits for the fire, the Paris prosecutor's office has the terror suspected early excluded largely. The investigation is rather difficult and in all likelihood will take a long time. There are no victims this time, whose names and biographies will be spread in the newspapers the day after, apart from a wounded firefighter.
The special thing about the disaster
When Notre-Dame burned, for the first time in nearly 900 years, all the French were victims - that's the special thing about this disaster that hits the country in a fragile, vulnerable moment: For months, the protests of the Yellow West movement are dividing the nation into different camps, France does not rest.
For weeks, President Emmanuel Macron drove through the country to talk to his dissatisfied citizens in up to eight-hour mammoth sessions. To prove that he can listen too. It was often about things like unfinished bypass roads or a bad school bus supply. The conclusion of this Grand Débat, this great debate with his own people, he wanted to pull Monday evening at 20 clock in a televised address to the nation and announce initial measures. For days he had meticulously prepared, on Sunday evening his closest advisers to the Élysée ordered to make final votes.
The speech should usher in the second part of his term, ending the crisis and marking a new beginning. Tax cuts were expected for low-income and middle-class people, an increase in pensions, but somehow the big hit that no one in Macron's immediate vicinity knew how to look. Then the roof of Notre Dame caught fire.
President Macron - made for the storms
The President learned about it at 7 pm when he had just recorded his speech. 40 minutes later he had the television call canceled. It was the right decision. Another 13 minutes later, the narrow center tower of Notre-Dame burned down from the roof.
During the presidential campaign of 2017, Macron had told the writer Emmanuel Carrère that he was not fit to govern in quiet times. He was made for the storms. Anyone who has watched him in his current term knows that this president is always best when he has to fight when there is no time for complacency. In that sense, the conditions are just optimal for him.
Hardly any other structure in this city, rich in beautiful buildings, is as close to the French as the Gothic sacred building in which Napoleon was crowned emperor in 1805. Not the Panthéon, not the Eiffel Tower, not even the Louvre. Notre-Dame survived the French Revolution and two world wars almost intact and the church became a place of great republican moments.
On August 26, 1944, Général de Gaulle celebrated the liberation of Paris with a religious ceremony following his triumphal procession across the Champs-Élysées. Shortly before, he had the pope of the cathedral, sympathetic to the Pétain government, deposed. Twenty-six years later, the funeral service for the general took place in Notre-Dame. And in January 1996 Helmut Kohl cried here for his friend, the late President François Mitterrand.
Everything done right so far
It is rare that a nation mourns collectively for a building - which, one wonders, would be, for example, in Germany: the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Elbphilharmonie?
"A stab in the heart of the French and all Europeans"
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So far, Macron has done everything right since the fire overruled the political agenda. "We will completely rebuild Notre-Dame because it is our destiny, our story," he explained shortly before midnight, when the church was still in flames. Then he praised the firemen, these "soldiers of the fire". It is the time of the grand gestures, today Macron speaks with the Pope, tomorrow the Council of Ministers is only to advise on the upcoming restoration of Notre-Dame.
In the video: "The French feel deeply hit"
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The President has declared the national disaster to be his very own task, hoping to bring the French behind him. The moments in which this can succeed are short in experience. François Hollande succeeded after the Paris attacks in November 2015, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after the 9/11 attacks.
The big disaster could turn to Macron's advantage. In any case, the speech recorded on Monday evening should no longer be broadcast in this way, it was said today from the Élysée.
The nation's demands on its president have changed overnight.