Emmanuel Macron, though it may be a little premature to be sure, appears to be maintaining the semblance of a grasp on his capital today. He seems to have done it much in the manner of Inspector Renault in the film Casablanca, with a roundup of the usual suspects.
The sun had barely risen on Paris before the Interior Ministry had announced hundreds of arrests. But few of these seem to have been made on the street. We have seen no camera-phone pictures of mass arrests. Rather, they were made in a pre-dawn sweep.
The police will have known exactly who they were looking for. The operation appears to have been successful, even if the notion of preventive detention might make some worry.
Notably absent today on the streets were the soldiers of the anarchist Black Bloc, otherwise known as Antifa, who were at the forefront of the riots last week.
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