Paris

Five years have passed since a major fire swept through the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris on April 19, 2019, bringing down the church’s roof but sparing the rest of the building. In response, French president Emmanuel Macron immediately promised that the structure, which is owned by the state, would be rebuilt quickly, and more beautiful than before. He further promised that the cathedral would be ready to receive worshipers and visitors in time for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. Since his announcement, however, things have not gone entirely to plan. Notre-Dame will not be finished in time for the Olympics; as of this writing, completion has been pushed off to December 2024.

When rulers are thrown out of their countries, they cannot expect all that much. Think of Napoleon, first cooling his heels in Elba, then ending his days in the damp-infested confines of Saint Helena. Which is why the former Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, was comparatively fortunate that the Parisian spot in which he found himself living after his abdication in December 1936 was Le Meurice in Paris: then, as now, a hotel that offers not only glitteringly luxurious accommodation to its well-heeled denizens, but a tangible sense of history — its lavishly appointed suites and restaurants exude an atmosphere that’s simultaneously relaxing and conspiratorial. Turn an unexpected corner, and you half-expect to see the ghost of Wallis Simpson, barking orders at some hapless minion.

“If you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity,” V.S. Naipaul once said, “go to Paris.” After two years of pandemic-induced shutdowns and travel bans — some of them instituted, it seemed at times, with the sole purpose of harrying visitors from Britain — it was oddly satisfying, rather than irritating, to be assailed once again by the sciolistic outpourings of aspiring novelists. On mild spring evenings, the Left Bank echoed with the chatter of students and veterans of the creative writing mills of North America. Paris, finally, was emerging from the thickets of depression and terror occasioned by disease, ennui and patrols of gendarmes hunting for delinquents out for a walk.

The last time I saw Paris, it was the early spring of 2017. A pallor hung over the city, the grands boulevards had lost their charm and downcast Parisians hurried about the streets with uncharacteristic alacrity. The day I arrived, a letter bomb exploded at the IMF’s headquarters on the Avenue d’Iéna, blocks away from where I was sitting on the terrace of a café on the Avenue Kléber. That the bomb turned out to be from Greek anarchists and not the usual Islamist suspects was little comfort; it had already ruined my café express. Two days later, a French-born Muslim took a female soldier hostage at Orly airport. A standoff ensued, with him holding a pistol to her head while her comrades aimed at his. ‘Put down your weapons!