The attack on the Charlie Hebdo's offices had its final and tragic epilogue yesterday with a police raid on a printing firm in Dammartin-en-Goële where the terrorists Chérif and Saïd Kouachi had taken refuge. At the same time, another police raid stormed a kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, Paris, where another gunman, identified as Amedy Coulibaly and as the same man who killed on Thursday morning a young policewoman, was holding more people hostages.
French President François Hollande described the events that dramatically marked these past days as "a tragedy for the nation". In the meantime, while Charlie Hebdo's surviving staff, now housed (as in 2011) in the offices of the daily paper Libération, plans a special edition of one million copies on next Wednesday, the wish for France and for Paris in particular is to see things going back to normal.
To illustrate this wish, I'm posting here "Street Scene in Paris" (Coin de rue à Paris, 1895) by Félix Vallotton (taken from the Met Museum collection). It may be impossible to erase from French history the dramatic attacks against innocent civilians that marked the last few days, but this gouache depicting the dynamic Parisian life with pedestrian traffic on a bustling boulevard is a graphic snapshot of busy life, portraying the fin-de-siècle Paris and a sense of happiness and flamboyancy (see the brightly coloured capes and the ribbon on one of the women's headdresses) that Paris will hopefully regain soon.
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