GREEK cities were filled Sunday night with cheering supporters of the victorious Oxi ("No") camp in the referendum on the bail-out terms demanded by the country's European creditors. Many believed they had launched an anti-austerity revolution that would soon sweep the rest of Europe. In the rest of Europe, such a revolution did not seem to be on the way. Across southern Europe and in France, where demonstrators had rallied in Paris to support the "No" vote (pictured), some sympathised with Greece's plea for solidarity; but others wondered why the Greeks feel entitled to special treatment. Meanwhile, in Germany and northern Europe, the "No" vote seemed only to have reinforced the conviction that Greece should be left to its fate. As Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, and François Hollande, France's president, prepared to meet Monday evening to discuss offering Greece one more chance, their countries were split by the divide.

The referendum has hardened German public opinion against concessions to the Greeks, not only because of the outcome but because of the style in which the "No" side campaigned. One image was salient on German televisions screens: the posters printed by the “No” camp depicting Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, with the caption “He’s been sucking your blood.” To Germans, Mr Schäuble, confined to a wheelchair since a madman shot him in 1990, has been sucking nobody’s blood; rather, he has spent his entire career fighting for a stronger and more integrated Europe, while insisting on sound budgeting. Mr Schäuble’s popularity has soared at home even as Greeks have come to revile him as the embodiment of austerity.

Mr Schäuble's centre-right party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), broadly agrees that the Greek "No" represents a slap in the face. About a third of the party’s parliamentary group already opposed more bail-out money to Greece before the referendum. This group is now growing. “Under no circumstances,” Wolfgang Bosbach, a conservative member of the CDU, told the German press, “are there to be more concessions or another rescue programme.” Because the second bail-out has expired, any new help to Greece would have to come from the European Stability Mechanism, which means Germany’s Bundestag would first have to give chancellor Angela Merkel a mandate to begin negotiations.

Mrs Merkel could still get that mandate. She could draw on the votes of her centre-left coalition partners, the Social Democrats, and the opposition Greens and The Left, an ex-communist party that is allied with Syriza. But even some Social Democrats are growing restive. Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD's boss, said negotiations for a new programme are "hard to imagine." The public is also fed up. According to a poll taken on July 2nd (ie, before the referendum), 85% of Germans believe that the creditors should not have made additional concessions in recent weeks and 52% believe that Greece should exit the euro.

France's citizens are more divided over Greece, but what is certain is that the crisis has reinvigorated French diplomacy. Up to now Europe's approach to Greece has been dominated by the Germans, but over the past week the French have asserted themselves. When Mr Hollande meets Mrs Merkel on Monday evening at the Elysée Palace in Paris, he will try to act as compromise-broker between Athens and Berlin. His government has made it clear that France wants to resume talks with Mr Tsipras in a last-ditch effort to keep Greece in the euro.

Even as the referendum was still underway, Emmanuel Macron, the French economy minister, spelled out France’s position. “Whatever the result,” he declared, negotiations should start again. In particularly strong terms, Mr Macron urged fellow Europeans to avoid “a Versailles Treaty of the euro zone”, referring to the punitive peace treaty after the first world war which imposed harsh terms on Germany and facilitated the rise of Nazism. The French take seriously the risk that an ejected Greece might fall into chronic instability, or under the influence of unsavoury foreign powers, or both. This weekend, Jean-Claude Trichet, former governor of the ECB, told Le Monde, a French newspaper, that “the real risk of a Greek exit is geopolitical”.

But Mr Hollande’s concern is also partly domestic. The French economy is emerging from three years of near-zero growth, and its public finances are beginning to look less strained. But public debt has reached over 97% of GDP. France can ill afford heavier debt-servicing costs, should it come under pressure in the bond markets. Elected in 2012 on a promise to end austerity in Europe, Mr Hollande is keen to show the French political left that he has not abandoned his word altogether. His own Socialist Party is home to a vocal minority of Tsipras sympathisers. Arnaud Montebourg, formerly Mr Hollande’s industry minister, for instance, tweeted a “tribute to the Greek people” after they voted No. Even further to the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the Left Front, organised a rally in Paris on Sunday night to celebrate.

The French political establishment is more equivocal. On Monday morning Alain Juppé, a former prime minister, laid out on his blog the case for a Greek “exit, without drama” from the euro. And Nicolas Sarkozy, former president and leader of the opposition Republican party, has cautioned against negotiations at any price. On the far right, Marine Le Pen’s National Front is positively cheering for Grexit, in order to boost her case that the euro is a project to “brainwash” the people of Europe.

Mr Hollande seems set on finding a way to keep Greece in. A natural consensus-seeker, he has struggled so far to find a proper role for himself in the Grexit crisis. French trust was rudely shaken by Mr Tsipras’s snap decision to hold a referendum, but the French still hope that there is space for a compromise. As for Mrs Merkel, domestic resistance does not rule out her opting for a new bail-out. She has long been criticised for her “politics of small steps”—an incremental style of crisis management that many blame for the emergence of Syriza in the first place—but her restraint in responding to the referendum suggests that she is still open to all scenarios. Throughout the history of the EU, periodic displays of Franco-German solidarity have been needed to keep the project from disintegrating. Now Mr Hollande is hoping that a compromise between Berlin and Paris can bring Europe and Greece back to the negotiating table and avert disaster.