Sunday
Arrive in Paris from the French Historical Studies conference in Toronto. The results of the first round presidential elections are due in two hours.
Over dinner with another 20th-century historian we are stunned by estimates that far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen is through to the second round.
Midnight: to the Bastille where thousands have congregated with rapidly fabricated banners, mobile phones and outrage.
Tuesday
Discussions, dismay and distraction in the Bibliothèque Nationale cafeteria. I learnt recently that an internment camp existed near this site during the occupation. Inmates sorted goods from deported Jews, labelling each "a gift from France for the disaster-stricken people of Germany".
Saturday
Paris has new decorations. Hundreds of balconies sport anti-fascist slogans handwritten on bed linen, or the full page " Non " that was one newspaper's headline on Monday. After a week of overwhelmingly peaceful nationwide daily protests, the first mass demonstrations gather. My favourite placard: "Now's the time for resistance: let's vote for the crook", expresses the only viable option - vote for Jacques Chirac despite his having dodged all corruption allegations. Some suggest voting in rubber gloves.
Sunday
Finish essay for French historian H. R. Kedward's Festschrift . My work on gender, anti-Semitism and republican-Vichy links has new relevance. Wish it hadn't.
Monday
Students and lecturers throughout France are organising exhibitions and study days. Many institutions suspend teaching.
At lunchtime, a school student march passes my window towards the nearby square. This arrondissement had the highest Lionel Jospin and lowest Le Pen vote in Paris. The square is teeming with children, gay couples, groups of Chinese friends, young men of North-African origin and Orthodox Jewish fathers with kids. I am glad to be living here and not in St Gilles, near Nimes, where Le Pen scored 35 per cent.
May Day
There are 400 anti-Le Pen demonstrations across France, plus Le Pen's own Joan of Arc rally (Vichy's favourite saint). There is a moving commemoration for Brahim Bouarram, murdered during a 1995 march.
It takes an hour to shuffle from one corner of Place de la Republique to another. There's little of the exhilaration one might expect from a Labour Day crowd of 600,000. Instead, one senses a fragile unity of determination and fear.
French television broadcasts Le Pen's family album. The political future seems in suspense.
Thursday
Vote in English local elections - the turnout is practically the same as France's abstention rate. The British National Party wins seats, yet Radio 4 seems intent on interviewing Le Pen's Front National as often as possible.
The Conférence des Présidents d'Université publishes a statement supporting intellectual freedom and democracy. It demands that "all students and French people" campaign until after the June parliamentary elections.
Across at Lyon II, the university postpones exams. I wonder if British university administration, academics and students would unite similarly? Only Lyon III, heart of intellectual negationism and currently subject to an education ministry inquiry, bucks the trend. Bruno Gollnisch, Le Pen's campaign director, teaches there. Access is barred to outsiders and posters removed.
Friday
The constitutional court rules rubber glove wearing an imprisonable offence.
Sunday
The new president is the candidate who, two weeks ago, convinced only 13 per cent of the electorate. Le Pen retains 5.6 million voters; St Gilles awarded him 40 per cent.
Karen Adler is research fellow in history at the University of Nottingham currently researching in Paris.