ONE protester carried a placard depicting Emmanuel Macron as a Nazi. Another produced an effigy of the French president swinging from the gallows. As France prepares for its tenth week of strikes, the mood among protesters on the streets has ranged from festive to violent. On May 26th some 190 rallies and marches were held across the country in an attempt to create a “popular tide” against Mr Macron’s reforms of the railways, universities and much else besides.

At first glance, the pressure on the French president remains intense. Train drivers and other railwaymen are due to continue their rolling strike, on two days out of every five, until June 28th, as planned. On May 29th over half of train drivers were still observing the strike, thereby continuing to make life miserable for commuters. Last week civil servants also took to the streets to defend their special status. Fresh complaints by students arose after half of the 800,000 applicants to university this year under a new, tougher, admission system ended up last week with no initial offer.

Yet, behind the scenes of discontent, Mr Macron may in fact be on the verge of an important victory. The evidence for this is threefold. First, railway workers, or cheminots, themselves seem to be losing faith. Fully 77% of train drivers went on strike on the first day of industrial action in early April, well above the current rate. The overall share of railway workers taking part in the strikes has dropped from 34% then to just 14% today. With worries about loss of pay, and lack of impact, only a small minority has decided to battle on.

Public opinion, too, has grown tired of the industrial action, but not in the way it did in the past. In 1995, when Alain Juppé, a centre-right prime minister, abandoned pension reform in the face of paralysing strikes, popular support for the unions increased as the weeks wore on. This time, support for the government has increased from 51% on the eve of the first day of strikes to 64% now. The strikes have been inconvenient, occasionally exasperating, but not crippling. New technology, from apps to organise ride-sharing to the SNCF’s live updated train schedules, has helped commuters cope.

Third, an attempt by unionists and political leaders to bring about a convergence des luttes (convergence of struggles), whereby workers and students unite—as they did in May 1968—in a moment of worker-bourgeois solidarity, has failed. Universities, from Rennes to Montpellier, that were blocked by sit-ins have been cleared, and most end-of-year exams are taking place. There have been some joined-up events. Unusually, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), a big union that likes to organise its own demonstrations, took part on May 26th in marches organised by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (FI), a far-left party. Yet the numbers on the streets that day—some 32,000 in Paris—were meagre. It “was not an equinox tide,” conceded François Ruffin, an FI deputy, wryly.

Caution is always in order when it comes to the French street. Things could yet get out of hand. But the chances are that the government will now get its railway reform through the Senate, where it went for review this week, without ceding much ground. Edouard Philippe, the prime minister, has done a decent job of explaining that the reform is not about privatisation, as some unionists claim, but about giving the French railways a chance of withstanding competition under forthcoming European Union rules. To this end, he has announced that the state will take on €35bn of the railways’ debt—assuming this secures EU approval. For his part, Mr Macron has been clear from the start that there was “no chance” he would shelve railway reform. Even student frustration seems to be ebbing. A week in, with university offers updated regularly, two-thirds of applicants had received at least one.

If Mr Macron does indeed emerge victorious from his battle over the railways this summer, it will not automatically clear the way for further reforms. A planned overhaul of pensions and public spending “could be more difficult because they directly affect everybody,” says Alexandre Holroyd, one of his La République en Marche members of parliament. Yet, if nothing else, Mr Macron’s show of steeliness in the face of the longest disruption so far to his young presidency will have shown that, when properly handled, reform in France is possible.