FRANCE: Lara Marlowe listened with thousands as Mr Le Pen intertwined the story of Joan of Arc with his own
Iron gates on either side of the Louvre were locked shut, but from the bridge where they paid homage to a Moroccan murdered by extreme right-wing thugs seven years ago, you could glimpse the sea of tricolours and "Le Pen President" placards moving down the rue de Rivoli. It needed Louis XIV's palace and several companies of riot police to protect the two Frances from each other yesterday. I had to show my press card to cross the police line; an otherwise sealed border between them.
The friends of Brahim Bouaram symbolically turned their backs on the right bank and marched towards Saint Germain-des-Prés.
Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen's supporters paused to lay bouquets before the statue of Joan of Arc.
They looked intensely ordinary; older, more rural and more conservatively dressed than the crowd on the bridge. Many carried signs saying, "I'm proud to be French" and hummed the national anthem. An elegant Parisian woman watched from under the arcades. "I find it very moving," she said, hastening to add that she would voted for President Jacques Chirac on Sunday. "You see only white people, only real French people, only French flags," she continued. "It isn't Le Pen I admire. It's these French people who defend their ideas. What you saw on the bridge isn't France.
There's no more France since we became multi-cultural." In front of the Opera, Mr Le Pen intertwined the story of Joan of Arc with his own until it was difficult to sort out which enemies, betrayal, barbary and lost sovereignty he referred to, though by the time he reached "socialist anarchy" one knew he referred to the outgoing Jospin government. "There are two camps in France now; the camp of the occupation and our own - the camp of liberation." French politicians of the left and right had colluded in a plot to colonise France with immigrants and steal taxpayers' money "before tearing each others' guts out". Mr Chirac was worst of all. "I'm not the one who shames France abroad," Mr Le Pen shouted while the crowd listened raptly. "Chirac dirties France." The incumbent president had refused a public debate with him because "Chirac fears a debate without tele-prompters as a mole fears light". Mr Le Pen's enemies - and they were legion - "reek of corruption, drip dirty money".
For the hour and a half that his harangue lasted, the crowd - between 8,000 and 10,000 by police count, 10 times that many according to the National Front - stood transfixed. Many wept when the Marseillaise played. Serge Tavergnier, a retired police officer and Algerian war veteran, said he'd supported Le Pen "without knowing he existed" then joined the National Front when it was founded in 1972. Others traced their conversion to a specific event. For one young man, it was when he was beaten up by two Arabs.
A middle-aged tour operator started attending Le Pen rallies after three African squatters attempted to take over her apartment and the police told her the socialists had changed the law, so they could not help her. Eugene Terret, a National Front candidate in the legislative elections, became disillusioned with the Gaullists when he saw centre-right party workers doing drugs in front of an anti-drug poster.
Mr Chirac stayed safe in the Élysée Palace yesterday, painfully aware that the hundreds of thousands of French people who flooded the Place de la Bastille and surrounding boulevards did so not out of love for him, but out of loathing for Mr Le Pen.
Ten days after Mr Le Pen qualified for the run-off, this other France at last found itself in the colourful, cheerful chaos of the streets. There were students and immigrants and old people, communists and trade unionists reminding you that May 1st was workers' day long before Le Pen hijacked it. Their reasons for marching seemed so self-evident that they were surprised to be asked the question.
They grimaced at the thought of voting for Mr Chirac, but they would do it.
For Matthias Tronqual, a theology student, Mr Le Pen's France was that other place, of immigrant banlieues and provinces, where people still believed in the greatness of France.
The France that is horrified by the National Front is largely urban, more modern and practical, wants European integration. "Chirac will win, but he won't have any legitimacy," Mr Tronqual continued.
"I hope the left will win the legislative elections. It will break the Fifth Republic. Chirac will become a ceremonial leader, like the queen of England. We'll have a modern political system, led by the prime minister, like other European countries."