“God says no?” I asked the policeman.

“They are against men marrying men,” he said.

I did not consider any opinions about the crowd’s cause, but I hated that they were making it difficult for us to cross the avenue. We wanted to get to our child and they were in our way. I grew angry and came near shouting at the marchers.

“I can’t believe this,” Meg said.

“Dieu dit non!”

We wended our way through the mass of people, their faces a mixture of ugly anger and glee. I found ways to hate them all, for their politics, for their noise, for their nastiness, for their simply being in my way. One woman who looked like she had stepped right out of a painting of the French countryside appeared to snarl at me. We made it to the other side of the road and walked past the impressionist museum and discovered a flurry of police activity, police shouting, police trotting, police pointing, police pushing nonpolicemen behind things, all with policely concern. Our policeman was talking into his radio and was now visibly agitated. He stopped us with a half-raised arm.

“What is it?” I asked.

“What’s wrong?” from Meg.

I pushed past our policeman and stepped around the tall hedge. Almost immediately I spotted Sarah. She was some forty yards away from me across the bare-ground plaza. It was what was between us that was causing the fuss. A white man held a pistol high over his head and was shouting at the top of lungs, “La voix du peuple, l’esprit de la France! Renvoyez-les! Renvoyez-les!”

Sarah cowered behind the sturdy leg of a big policeman who stood with his automatic rifle at the ready. She was terrified of course. She found my face across the commotion and pleaded for my help. The man with the pistol continued to shout, even louder now, and wave his weapon. He turned his blond head and looked in the direction of my daughter. I don’t know what came over me, but I became convinced that this right-wing fanatic was zeroing in on the dark skin of my child. He was turned away from me, and all of a sudden I was sprinting toward him. He turned to me just as I was on him. I collided with him hard enough to knock him over. I grabbed the pistol, twisted it, and bent it back against the outside of his hand. I thought I heard his finger break, and I thought even then that I couldn’t have in that din. He didn’t let go. The police were on top of the two of us immediately. They were as rough with me as they were with him. I was elbowed in the back of the head and had my arm wrenched behind my back. I saw Meg running to Sarah. Sarah screamed for me; her voice sliced through the shouting of men. The policemen asked me again and again what I thought I was doing. I didn’t understand the French, but the tone made the meaning clear. The word bête was repeated. Sarah and Meg managed to get to me. I was handcuffed. I dropped to a knee to let Sarah wrap her arms around my neck. A policeman pulled her away. The cop who had been helping us explained to the others what was going on, then he looked at me and asked in English what I thought I was doing.