FRANCE: For once, President Bush dropped the comparisons between his "war on terrorism" and the second World War. He didn't say that al-Qaeda was the equivalent of Nazism, did not again compare September 11th to Pearl Harbour.
It was as if the enormity of what happened here, on the beaches of Normandy on June 6th 1944, dwarfed America's more recent battles. Six US, British and Canadian divisions came ashore in the biggest amphibious landing in history. Some 25,000 Americans died in the battle, and crosses marking 9,386 of their graves surrounded the American leader.
Mr Bush quoted the late French President Francois Mitterrand. "Nothing in history compares to D-Day. The 6th of June sounded the hour when history tipped towards the camp of freedom."
Only twice, as he stood in the rain to read his speech, did the President allude to the present conflict. US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan "can know the cause is just," he said.
"They have saved many others from tyranny." The security of the US and Europe "is still bound up in a transatlantic alliance defending the world from terrorists," he added. "Our wars have won for us every hour that we live in freedom," Mr Bush said.
As if responding to the slogans shouted in anti-US demonstrations the past two days, he added, "We came to liberate Europe, not to colonise it. The only lands we claim as ours are the resting places of our men in uniform."
The graves at Colville face west, Mr Bush noted, towards America. One by one, six vintage cannons fired a 21-round salute. The flames shot out from the barrels and smoke drifted across the field of crosses towards the sea. Earlier, at the church in Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first village liberated by allied troops, President Jacques Chirac told Mr Bush that "France knows what it owes America . . . I want to tell you how grateful we are. Grateful for all the soldiers who spilled their blood on ground that was not their own. Grateful for those who came to defend, in peril of their lives, values that are dear to both our nations."
But gratitude can be an awkward basis for friendship. "It's unbearable for us to think that . . . we owe our freedom to American troops," the French writer Pascal Bruckner told La Croix newspaper. "Gratitude is the most unbearable thing in the world." Mr Bush thanked Mr Chirac for being the first foreign leader to visit Washington after September 11th. Mr Hubert Védrine, the former foreign minister who annoyed Washington by calling it the "hyper power" and denouncing the dangers of America's "simplistic attitude", will not be missed by the Bush administration.
But the fault lines in Franco-American relations remain. At dinner on Sunday night, Mr Chirac warned Mr Bush against what he said was an anti-French campaign in the US. Mr Bush had spoken publicly of the murder of the US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and "French anti-Semitism" in the same sentence. France's grievances with the US are increasingly shared by other Europeans - the US farm bill, a 30 per cent tariff on EU steel exports to the US, American rejection of the Kyoto accords and an international court, US bias in favour of Israel, and an inclination to use force in the name of the "war on terrorism" against Iraq.
Mr Bush's visit showed to what extent the US leader lives under siege. Five metro stations within a mile of the US ambassador's residence were shut down while he was in Paris. The 100 inhabitants of Sainte-Mere-Eglise were overwhelmed by Mr Bush's 1,500-strong secret service escort.
