The cafe on the Place de la Bastille falls silent at 11 p.m. on a balmy Friday night. All eyes turn towards the river, straining to see down the empty Boulevard Henri IV. From the quayside, a phalanx of motorcycle police moves forward with flashing red lights and sirens. They reach us in just a few moments, followed closely by a horde of whooping, cheering men and women on roller-blades.
There are thousands of them; more than 15,000 - a thundering, vibrating train which brings to mind William Wallace's Scotsmen storming the battlefields in Braveheart. Applause and another wild cheer rises briefly from the cafe tables, then the customers go back to their beer and conversation. A few tourists venture to the edge of the pavement to take pictures.
For a quarter of an hour the onslaught continues at up to 40 kmph. One man skates backwards, glancing nonchalantly over his shoulder. Others leap, pirouette, glide with one leg held horizontal. A few talk on cell phones, or drink water from Evian bottles; the connoisseurs sip from "camel bags" equipped with a straw to keep their hands free. It is a mixed crowd that speeds by - shirtless young men, couples holding hands, teenage women in skin-tight lycra, a man with dreadlocks and a sound system strapped to his back, a little boy brandishing a metallic helium balloon so the others will not run him over.
A pair of police from the 11-strong "roller brigade" are among the crowd, one of them looking wobbly despite his training by a former Olympic champion ice skater. Unlike most of their fellow skaters, the police wear full protective gear: banana-shaped helmets, wrist and knee pads and - in case they encounter obstreperous motorists, pedestrians or skaters - handcuffs and pistols. The other nine roller-cops bring up the rear of the procession with the stragglers. The ambulance at the back is a precaution, but also a reminder that this is a bone-breaking sport - especially at night on steep cobblestone streets. The hundreds of cyclists who follow the procession are considered "undesirable" by organisers, but cannot legally be excluded.
Later, there is a much less clean-cut motorcycle rally at the Bastille. All Paris, it seems, has been seized with a passion for massing and locomotion, for fraternity on wheels.
The French caught on to roller-blading long after it took hold in the US and Britain. But they then transformed the fad into a unique phenomene de societe Six years ago, small groups of 30 to 40 began meeting in Montparnasse for night-time skate-rides through Paris. By 1997, there were nearly 1,000, and the police became alarmed. The chief roller-bladers began negotiating their weekly itinerary with the prefecture.
In June 1998, the police created a skating unit, which patrols roller-intensive areas such as the Trocadero espalande, the place du Palais-Royal and the place de la Bourse when they are now accompanying what everyone now calls (in English) "la Friday Night Feeveur". This month, the turn-out for the 25 km, three-hour skate-ride has dropped to about 15,000, because so many Parisians have left on holiday. In the spring, participation often exceeded 22,000. In addition to the Paris skate-ride, an estimated four million French people are now regular rollerbladers. It is not uncommon to see men in business suits and ties skating to work, careful to go slowly so they do not arrive bathed in sweat at the office.
A 29-year-old Mick Jagger look-alike in a black jump-suit with a flashing white triangle on his back leads the procession most Friday nights. He is Boris Belohlavek, a computer engineer specialising in interactive satellite television programmes, and the president of Pari-Rollers, the non-profit group that organises "la Feeveur". The weekly itinerary appears on the group's website (www.pari- roller.com) on Wednesday. For some unknown reason - a herd mentality? - the majority of French roller-bladers seem to work in information technology. "I've noticed it too," Belohlavek says. "Maybe computer programmers need to faire du fun. When you sit in front of a computer all day you get into a rut. If you don't do some sport, you turn into un big mac."
What sporting goods company or political party would not dream of bringing 22,000 people into the streets every weekend? Belohlavek resists constant solicitation from would-be sponsors.
"I've always said `no', because rollerblading is a passion for me," he says. And he does not want to endanger Pari-Rollers's relationship with the police. "The authorities have understood that it's a popular movement, that it's a celebation, that we don't damage anything and we aren't aggresssive." He earns no money from running the association, which now has 160 volunteer staff, but he meets many people, including a series of roller-skating girlfriends. "They have to skate," he laughs. "Otherwise it can't work."
The grandson of a Czech miner who arrived in northern France in 1910, Belohlavek started attending roller rallies in 1993. "What interested me was this mix of people who all do something different - from big company executives to construction workers. They were all roller-blading and talking to each other."
Belohlavek boasts about the club of 80 incredulous American roller-bladers who are scheduled to observe "la Feeveur" next month. "The maximum they ever get is between 800 and 1,000 people," he says. "It's been four months since I've been able to see the entire procession. It's so gigantic that there's not a single street in Paris long enough to hold us all - not even the ChampsElys ees. We can't help being proud of being the first association that created roller-jams."
The roller-jams are becoming a problem, since motorists must wait up to half an hour at intersections for the skaters to pass. The French are known for their willingness to sacrifice the common good to preserve individual rights. But there are limits. Belohlavek is haunted by the fear that a frustrated motorist will plough down a few skaters, or that a mother pushing a baby carriage will try to cut through the procession. The most serious injury so far was a woman skater who crashed on a speed bump in a tunnel and cracked her skull.
"La Feeveur" begins at the Place d'Italie, near Paris's Chinatown, at 10 p.m. As thousands flock together on the Place and adjoining boulevards, Boris Belohlavek climbs to a balcony and addresses the skaters with a loudspeaker. "I want to remind everyone that this skate-ride is reserved for people who know how to brake," he shouts. A separate rally for beginners is held every Sunday.
As I walk through the crowd, rollerbladers glance dismissively at my shoes. People on foot look very uncool here. A group of male students tell me they like seeing the sights of Paris by night, and that the skate-ride is a good way to meet girls. Chloe and Fiona, sisters aged nine and twelve, lead me to their father, whom they introduced to the Friday night outing. "Their mother won't came," he shrugs. As the procession gets going, the girls take off like demons, hunched over and bent at the knee, their father struggling to keep up with them. Frank and Anouk, an excessively tall Dutch couple, tell me they have driven seven hours from the Netherlands to join "la Feeveur".
Sam Niewswizki, a 72-year-old retired sound technician has skated in the Friday-night procession twice. "You feel like you're participating in a great event," he says. One evening, a skater played bullfight music on a trumpet and the entire procession shouted, "ole, ole, ole". He laughs as he tells me about the fat roller-blader who comes dressed as a baby in giant nappy and bib, and the group of Englishmen who travel every Friday from London.
Niewswizki has been skating for 60 years, and his collection of books, engravings and antique skates is visited by journalists covering the French roller-blade phenomenon. The roller skate was invented by John Joseph Merlin in the 1760s. "Merlin was from Flanders, and he missed ice-skating on the canals when he moved to London," Niewswizki explains. The first roller skates were in-line - with the wheels in a line down the middle, like present-day roller-blades. Around 1875, an American inventor created the popular four-wheel model that most of us knew as children. Within a year, there were more than 60 skating rinks in London, followed by 18 rinks in Paris. Colonial Britain and France even built rinks in Cairo, Algiers, Hong Kong and Saigon. The craze ended in 1879, to reappear as a competition sport in 1910.
So will those millions of pairs of French roller-blades soon be consigned to the back of the bedroom closet? Niewswizki doesn't think so. "Today it is no longer a fad," he says. "It has settled in; it's a way of life now."