And the magistrates? Laurent Nuñez, minister of the interior, wished to lay down his office, as Le JDD and Euronews tell it; Emmanuel Macron refused, saying that continuous command of the police was needed in times like these, and ordered new methods of action against the rioters to be put on the streets as fast as possible. He also confessed that foresight and intelligence had failed. The next day the same Nuñez, with Sébastien Lecornu, the prime minister, at his side, declared, as Le Figaro reports, that for Tuesday's match in Paris between Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona, and for the other European Cup fixtures, Lille's among them, the question does not arise: the matches are not called off. Meanwhile the President sets out for Arabia, for Kuwait, the Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar, as Euronews informs us, to hunt for oil and diesel and bring the prices down.

I remember Domitian: a fisherman brought him an enormous turbot, and he summoned his friends to the Alban villa, grave men, pale men, to give their opinions on how such a monster should be cooked. We laughed at the time. The empire of the world, the council of the prince, and the agenda is a casserole! Now a crisis cell is convened, the prime minister takes his seat, the shops are smoking; and what is the first thing to come out of the minister's house to the public? The ball. Domitian at least had a fish that was new and rare; here it is the everyday article, a leather sphere kicked about by twenty-two feet.

I know the old formula; I wrote it myself, long ago, about our own people: the anxious crowd longs for two things only, bread and circuses. But observe how carefully our magistrates have cut it in half. The people asked for bread, that is, a cheap annona, fuel they can afford for their lamps and their cars; that bread is being sought in Arabia, from foreign kings, and it has to be paid for. The circuses, on the other hand, are ready at home, free, guaranteed, proof against any riot. What is asked for is begged abroad; what nobody asked for is lavished at home.

Not that I applaud those fires. The man who burns a town hall is not looking for bread; the man who loots a shop does not lower prices, he raises them. Imagine some shopkeeper who has risen before dawn for twenty years, paid his interest, paid his taxes: in the morning he counts his broken glass and sweeps up the ash with a broom, while a youth strolls home laughing in stolen trainers. So the poor man watches the poor man robbed again, and neither of them ever sees the disdain of the rich. And the police, nearly a thousand of whom lie wounded, will guard the arena on Tuesday. Who will guard the shop?

What shall I say of the resignation? The minister offered his punishment, the President granted pardon before anyone had looked for the fault; the play was performed, and nobody clapped. Intelligence failed, they confess, as though some unforeseen storm had dropped from the sky, when the marches had been announced openly across the whole province. Naturally, in the arena everything is foreseen: the hour, the gate, the seat, the number of fans. In the streets, nothing.

The remedy belongs not to a philosopher but to any head of a household. First the streets, then the stadium; first the annona, then the cup; first the shopkeeper, then the fan. A magistrate who cannot hold the forum should not boast of the arena. Until this is done, let one inscription be cut on the town hall of Limoges, if any wall is left standing: Here the Republic burned; the games, however, were played on schedule.