French President Emmanuel Macron, acting as the nation’s arbiter elegantiarum, seems relentless in his pursuit to alter Notre-Dame. While his 2019 proposal to replace the cathedral’s flèche with modern embellishments was thwarted, his current target is the windows of the south chapels, as if driven by an uncontrollable desire to leave his mark on this ancient monument, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The audacity of Macron’s actions raises concerns, reflecting a trend seen sixty years ago when French Minister of Culture André Malraux, driven by a similar self-aggrandizing impulse, replaced Lenepveu’s 19th-century ceiling in Paris’s Palais Garnier opera house with Chagall’s flamboyant cartoons.

[What an appalling, unholy tragedy that would be. ~ Beege]