The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said on Sunday that he would not rule out the president’s declaring a state of emergency, but by day’s end that appeared less likely, at least for the time being. The president has emergency powers that were expanded after the terrorist attacks of November 2015.

“It is out of the question that each weekend becomes a ritual of violence,” a government spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, said in an interview on Europe 1.



The Élysée Palace said on Sunday that Mr. Macron would not comment on the protests.

Mr. Macron visited one of the worst-hit streets, the Avenue Kléber, where about a third of the stores were vandalized and all of the ATMs were smashed. He was both booed and cheered.

He also inspected the damage to the Arc de Triomphe, where supporters of the Yellow Vests had scrawled messages. He climbed to the top of the monument, as some of the Yellow Vests had done on Saturday night; it was now ringed with hundreds of police officers and special riot squads.

The graffiti seemed targeted at Mr. Macron, who has been described as the “president of the rich.”

“The Yellow Vests Will Triumph” and “Macron Quit,” read two of the scrawls. Others reported in Le Monde, France’s leading newspaper, said: “Topple the bourgeoisie,” “We cut off heads for less than this” and “May 1968, December 2018.”

The last message appeared to link the current protests with the nationwide strikes and fights with the police in 1968 that resulted in major social changes and compromises with workers.

The protesters’ anger was visible in the many streets that fan out from the Arc de Triomphe, which dominates one end of the Champs-Élysées, and along several other commercial avenues, where looters had broken windows, burned cars and built barricades. Vandals also targeted the wealthy area around the Church of Saint-Augustin, just off Avenue Haussmann, a major shopping street with famous department stores like Au Printemps and Galeries Lafayette.