Macron, who came to power in 2017 as a radical centrist eager to shake up French politics and play a more assertive role on the European stage, embraced the part of continental statesman. “People always rally around a wartime leader,” Nicholas Dungan, a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, told my colleague Rick Noack. “The leadership by Macron is completely consistent with the image the French have of what their country should be doing: It’s a global power, it needs to be listened to, it should be aiming for peace.”

As Sunday’s first-round vote nears, though, Macron has reason to sweat. He will likely finish at the top of the pack, but polls now show a statistical toss-up between him and Le Pen should they face each other in the second round on April 24. “It’s one minute to midnight,” former prime minister Manuel Valls wrote in a column in French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche. “Marine Le Pen could be elected president of the republic.”

Le Pen has closed the gap on Macron no matter the bad odor of her and her party’s Russophilia — her supporters had even circulated a campaign leaflet showing her shaking Putin’s hand — and the frequent broadsides from Macron’s camp. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Thursday that, in a France led by Le Pen, “there would be less sovereignty because we would be allies of Russia, of Vladimir Putin.”