In my last post, I told about our visit to Paris, a Paris in which we walked, felt secure, visited monuments and museums, some guarded, some not, ate in restaurants, one of them in the Marais, and strolled in a soft evening along the Seine to Notre Dame. In a heartbeat all that changed for the people of Paris and for us too, watching the armed presence in the streets, the check-points, the searches, the bodies carried away on stretchers, so many of them young.

But Paris has seen carnage before, and lost her young before, in world wars, in revolution, and endured, recovered, and become Paris again, symbol of art and reason and enlightenment. So she shall this time.

In the remote past, Roman legions lived there, marched and conquered, and now old men play boules where gladiators fought. We walked across the arena when we visited Paris.

The old men will play boules, the young will go to concerts and they will all sit in cafes and drink wine and laugh.

Paris will endure and so will what she stands for.