On November 16, 2016, a couple, she in sunglasses and leather pants, he in a slim-fitting black suit and thin matching tie, slipped incognito under the central gate and archways of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. Just after declaring his candidacy for the presidential election in the nearby Paris suburb of Bobigny, Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by his wife Brigitte, slipped away to secretly visit the tombs of the 43 kings of France. In the winter light filtering through the rose window of the south arm, the future president caressed the white marble of the recumbent sculpted figures.

For all those who take power, there’s an original scene. Saint-Denis is the crucible of France’s royal past, a key place in the national narrative. Other presidential candidates, lovers of history, had preceded Macron in drawing a piece of legitimacy from this magnetic pole of monarchical ambitions: François Mitterrand in the autumn of 1980; Jean-Luc Mélenchon, more quietly, in 2012.

On that day in November 2016, journalists and the embedded writer Philippe Besson, then busy writing his book A character from a novel (“A character from a novel”), missed Macron’s escapade. But on the way back, he confided to one of his early admirers, the journalist-blogger Bruno Roger-Petit, the meaning of his visit to Saint-Denis: Amid the “stones that speak,” he found himself “alone in his destiny.”

An element of mysticism envelops great political journeys, Macron has always thought. In footage recorded in 2016 by director Pierre Hurel, for his documentary So be Macron (“So is Macron,” 2017), it’s a young man with a lived-in gaze who speaks: “Ever since I entered the political field, I’ve lived [my adventure] as a mission. There is (…) something that goes beyond you, that preceded you and that will remain.”

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Emmanuel Macron, a certain idea of power