It is the evening of September 9, and the Stade de France is a sea of sound and flashing lights as the Paris public greet their World Cup heroes, embarking on another campaign. The golden trophy is raised aloft once more. The crowd bathes in euphoria, as they did, one million and more of them, filling the Champs Elysees the day after their triumph in Moscow.France is awash with pride, a nation at ease with itself. The President of the Republic surrounds himself with the players, handing out the gongs and modestly basking in reflected glory, as presidents always do.On the eve of that day in July, Simon Kuper, doyen of sportswriters and correspondent for the Financial Times in the French capital, described Emmanuel Macron as “perhaps the luckiest of presidents”. Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief for The Economist, has written that Macron aims to provide France “with moments of collective exaltation, of common feeling, that bring a nation together, in awe or in sorrow.”Winning the World Cup fitted the bill perfectly, especially for the French. After all they invented it.Then suddenly it was as if a bubble had burst.The Champs Elysees, avenue of triumph, was transformed into a street…