Comment: Perhaps, but only unity in the sense of the majority of people against the Parisian elites.
It is rare that gaps need to be closed in the sky. In this case, though, it was urgently needed. For almost five years, Parisians looked into a sad emptiness when they walked past Notre-Dame and looked up. The void reminded them of a national trauma: the evening of April 15, 2019, when smoke first rose from the Gothic building and flames then shot out of the roof.
With every catastrophe, there is a moment when the hope dies that the drama can still be averted. On that evening in April, it was the minute the glowing tower plunged into the depths. On both banks of the Seine to the left and right of the Île de la Cité, people stood and shouted, unable to believe what they were seeing.
Television stations sent images of the burning "flèche" around the world, just as they had shown the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. And in November 2015, the footage of desperate people fleeing from Islamic State (IS) terrorists via windows in the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, hanging helplessly from the façade.
Comment: The ND renovation may be almost complete, but the culprits - and their handlers - remain at large.