Joie De Vivre

It is Wednesday night. France has won its World Cup semi-final, and all of Paris is in the streets celebrating.

They crowd at intersections and plazas, climbing on statues, fountains, arches, memorials. Every monument in the city is tonight a monument to the French national futbol team. The people of Paris are shouting, setting off fireworks, honking horns, waving flags—the tricolors of France, herself, and a potpourri of former colonies’ banners. The crowds roar for the brave, drunken daredevils balancing precariously on the tops of old cars, wrapped in the tricolors and firing off Roman candles. Children are enthralled, and the adults are beaming. A red-faced man we saw sitting on the sidewalk earlier in the day, attended by paramedics, is here, exuberant, jumping, Lazarus raised by the sheer force of France’s joy.

The morning will bring a rare site: an entire city, hung over, on a weekday, trying to regain their famed French cool. On the Metro, millions of strangers heading to work will make short, sheepish eye contact with each other, as if to say “Yes, I remember what we did last night. Let’s not talk about it, so it won’t get weird.”

But tonight there are no strangers, only friends and family; brothers and sisters passing wine bottles from hand to hand, singing, reveling, celebrating their victory, and living out, for one blessed evening at least, their cherished ideals: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!