The half-lit cathedral I first saw as a young man allowed for human error, like those revolutionaries after 1789 lopping the stone heads off biblical kings they mistakenly took to be French. In time the children playing in the transept would be mine. Two of them were born in Paris, city of gilt and gravel, its islands pointing their prows to the bridges, its arteries anchored by Notre-Dame; the cathedral always there across the Seine, reassuring, its facade as solemn as the twin bell towers, its flanks fanciful as the flying buttresses and gargoyles, monumental from any angle whatsoever.

Our Lady of Paris is still there after the blaze, with her towers, roofless now. President Macron vowed to rebuild the cathedral. Money is pouring in. The French president was dignified, a reminder of the unifying power of dignity at a time when it has vanished from the White House.

Notre-Dame, Macron said, is “our history” and “our imaginary”: a means, in other words, to remember and an inspiration to all who aspire for something transcendent, beyond self. The contribution of President Trump, for whom self is all, was to suggest sending “flying water tankers” to douse the cathedral. His advice was ignored.

Perhaps, for an American, the closest thing to Notre-Dame, in its power to represent the nation, is the Statue of Liberty, work of a French sculptor. A mist hung over the water the other day, with the magical result that the torch of liberty hovered in the air, apparently detached. Seeing it, I imagined Emma Lazarus’s poem rewritten for the age of Trump:

Give me your despots, your rich,

Your vulgar tax evaders yearning to flee,

The depraved and debauched that itch

To steal, I will make them free.

Send these, the dishonorable, to watch

How easy it is to corrupt like me.

I don’t recall French civilization feeling so important in my lifetime. It’s what we have. There will be ugly polemics over the coming weeks, once the first shock passes, over who was responsible, how this disaster happened, what negligence was involved. But in those silent, reverent, hymn-singing crowds on the streets of Paris, I also saw the possibility of a French coming-together in the determination to rebuild — not only the cathedral, but also a nation shaken by the violence of the Yellow Vest movement and the social divisions it reflects. The story of Notre-Dame is a story of endurance and rebirth.

It is also a story of European civilization. Notre-Dame survived Hitler, just. Its fragility, now demonstrated, demands Europe’s unity, too.

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