Inside the opulent state dinner Macron held for Biden

Beneath the crystal chandeliers of the gilded reception hall of the Elysee Palace, opened in 1889 with a party for 8000 people, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted US President Joe Biden at a state dinner intended to celebrate a very old alliance and demonstrate that the bond is greater than its intermittent frictions.

The going was scarcely that at a sumptuous dinner served at tables set between the fluted columns of a room conceived a century after the French Revolution to project the glory of the Republic. The balance at the dinner was fine-tuned. Tables had names that included Great Smoky Mountains, Cévennes, Everglades, Redwood, and La Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department of France.

In fact, the friendship can be prickly, and Macron, in good Gaullist tradition, is fond of saying that France will “never be the vassal of the United States”. The two countries’ policies toward Ukraine and Israel are not precisely aligned, but, as the dinner demonstrated, a large reserve of goodwill tends to smooth over differences.

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