PARIS — For Georges Duby, a historian of the Middle Ages, one of the defining features of a historic event, or “évènement,” is that it triggers waves of commentary that bring out what had been kept unspoken. The fire that broke out at Notre-Dame this week is a historic event of our times.

Monday night, even before the flames had been quenched, while we were still wondering whether the cathedral’s two towers would withstand the fire, the incident had already become a symbol — many symbols.

It was a sinister omen of France’s decline, some promptly said. For a columnist in these pages, it was a sign of the fragility of Western democracy and civilization.

On Tuesday, the environmental activist Greta Thunberg, seeing in the building’s embers the image of an incandescent Earth, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, “Notre-Dame will be rebuilt,” and urged the legislators to save the planet, too, by shifting gears to “cathedral mode.” President Emmanuel Macron solemnly declared: “What we saw last night in Paris is our capacity to mobilize, to unite, in order to overcome.” Notre-Dame, he vowed, would be restored within five years.

Celebrating the Paris firefighters’ heroic work in bringing the blaze under control, the president said on Thursday, “The state and public authorities often are criticized. But in moments such as these, the entire nation knows how to organize itself.”

In no time, it seemed, the charred cathedral became a rallying cry for bringing together a fractured country — a way for France “to find again the thread of its national project,” Mr. Macron said.

But how could one not see behind these grand pronouncements that this fire already was obscuring a slower but vaster one that has been burning steadily for months, on occasion literally torching cars and tony Parisian restaurants? Since November, the so-called Gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) have demonstrated throughout the country against the rise in inequalities and the drop in living standards, claiming as well that French democracy is not representative enough.

History has a sense of irony. France’s most famous monument ignited Monday evening just as Mr. Macron was expected to address the country on television and explain how his government proposed to put out that social brazier. His speech was postponed, understandably, and for a few hours much of France focused its attention on Paris’ historic center, which it usually turns over to tourists.

But history also is cruel. Only a little bit of information about the government’s proposed reforms has been disclosed, and it’s difficult to imagine that it will have any of the soothing, much less redemptive, effects the government may have hoped for. If anything, the Macron administration’s continued vagueness about major demands — a wealth tax, greater democratic participation — suggests that it is still dead-set on reducing deficits and refusing to put pressure on the rich, that it will not bow to the Gilets jaunes’ demands for fiscal justice. Yet even as the government was whimpering, in effect, that the country’s coffers were running low, money came pouring in for a cathedral.

In a matter of hours, François-Henri Pinault, one of France’s wealthiest men, offered 100 million euros to rebuild Notre-Dame; Bernard Arnault, who heads the luxury brand LVMH, offered 200 million. Within less than two days, about 850 million euros had been pledged for the cathedral’s reconstruction.

A journalist sarcastically asked Philippe Martinez, the leader of a major labor union, whether the flood of donations was evidence of trickle-down economics. “Money doesn’t trickle down for everything,” Mr. Martinez answered, adding that the outburst of generosity from French billionaires only exposed the inequalities that divide the country.

Such gifts aren’t just a private matter; they cost the state, too. For one thing, and certainly in the eyes of some Gilets jaunes, these philanthropists are offering only a small fraction of enormous fortunes they have amassed partly by avoiding taxes otherwise needed to fund basic public services. And since their proposed gifts are destined for France’s national heritage, the bulk of them could benefit from major tax exemptions — up to 90 percent if a proposed bill presented this week were to pass.

A number of state bodies also have offered to contribute, drawing on strained budgets. Laurent Wauquiez, who heads both the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and the conservative party Les Républicains, has offered two million euros in public funds. Other local governments have followed suit.

The rush to rebuild Notre-Dame, however well-intentioned, risks only underscoring the government’s slowness in helping the people whose lives, some say, have been ruined by neoliberalism and globalization. France’s elites quote Victor Hugo in the name of saving the cathedral he wrote about, apparently forgetting that he also wrote “Les Misérables.” It is a sad, and dangerous, signal to be sending. That other, greater, fire still needs putting out.

Michaël Foessel is a professor of philosophy at l’Ecole polytechnique. Etienne Ollion is associate professor of sociology at Polytechnique and a research fellow at le Centre national de la recherche scientifique. This essay was translated from the French by The New York Times.

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