These are heady days in Paris, says Frank McNally. Since the launch of Operation Vélib three weeks ago, the winds of freedom have been blowing through the streets and boulevards, fanned by 10,600 hired bicycles.
The city's long, dark years of occupation by the forces of the automobile seem to be nearing an end, and it's thrilling to be alive at such a time.
Of course the battle is not won yet. As late as yesterday, the 12-exit roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe remained under vehicular control, with drivers clearly under orders to kill any cyclist who crossed their path. Fierce street-by-street fighting was also reported from the Latin Quarter and Montmartre.
But Vélib users now command large areas of the city, taunting motorists with exaggerated hand signals. Already there are rumours of drivers quietly defecting and trying to pass themselves off as members of the resistance.
Caught up in the city's giddy mood last weekend as I sped through Place Vendôme in top gear, I briefly considered a plan in which I would "Véliberate" the Ritz - asking the doorman to hold my bike while I went to the toilet. As I neared the target, however, the prospect of coming under fire from a French porter's stare caused my nerve to fail. I kept cycling.
It's fair to say that there were some concerns beforehand about how the free bicycle scheme would work. In a vox-pop in the current edition of Paris Times, a woman called Catherine P. (29) summed up the feelings of many when she agreed that Vélib was a "great initiative", before adding that she didn't ride a bike in Paris herself "because I don't want to die so young".
But my experience is that cycling here is not nearly as terrifying as you might expect. To tell the truth, most other road users have been perfectly polite. It's possible that drivers are still trying to gauge the strength of the Vélib movement - expected to peak at 20,000 bikes - before launching a counter-offensive in the autumn. For now they seem remarkably accepting of the invasion.
It probably helps that all but a few Véliberators are still observing the code of ethics printed on their handlebars. Everywhere you look there are cyclists stopping at red lights, not mounting footpaths, and restricting themselves to the correct direction on one-way streets. It all seems so quaint.
The Vélib is free only for the first half-hour. After that, you face a rising scale of charges: up to and including the outright purchase of the bicycle (for €150, pre-authorised on your credit card) should you fail to return it. This is not a big temptation. Apart from having a built-in lock, the bike's distinctive appearance is designed to deter theft. Vélibs are fun for short periods, but you wouldn't want to bring one home to your mother.
It's possible to ride the bikes all day at no charge, just as long as you remember to keep changing them. They're like horses on the old Pony Express routes. Every half-hour, you have to get a fresh mount, while the old one recuperates at a docking station. But such is the ubiquity of stations - 750 of them, an average of 300 metres apart - that this is easily done.
The only worry is that there have been teething problems with some of the computers, which appear prone to nervous breakdowns when three or four users converge on a station simultaneously. The suspicion that I am now the legal owner of several bicycles will linger at least until I get my next Visa bill.
Incidentally, the ubiquity of docking points also means that, should you wish to, you can cycle only downhill. This is the French social model at work. If you're old or frail, you can easily limit yourself to routes that allow free-wheeling. Then you abandon the bike at the nearest station and use public transport for the return journey.
Neo-liberals will probably argue that this encourages laziness, as well as casting an unfair redistributive burden on fitter cyclists. But we'll leave that debate to the French.
A philosophical objection to the Vélib scheme as a whole is that it may discourage walking, still undoubtedly the best way to see Paris. The "flâneur" - an aimless stroller who delights in minute study of the city's everyday life - has been a staple of French literature for centuries. A "passionate observer", Baudelaire called him, who "takes pleasure everywhere".
Perhaps the greatest flâneur of all was the late-18th century writer Louis Mercier, who wrote a 12-volume epic called Picture of Paris. The work recorded his meticulous observations of life in the city, including the behaviour of the military and police, who, he noted, "seem suited to subjugate forever the outbreak of any serious uprising".
Bearing in mind that he wrote this shortly before 1789, it is possible that the observational powers of flâneurs have been overrated. But in any case, you can use your Vélib for the boring bits of Paris, such the relatively sterile 7th arrondissement - a desert on a hot August afternoon - before plunging back into the streetscape on foot, wherever you choose. That's the glory of the scheme.
With the forces of car pollution in retreat, there are - as in August 1944 - competing claims about who liberated the city. Another fearless band of two-wheelers - the Segway users - continues to brave ridicule in the Tuileries and such places, its members looking like gardeners whose lawn-mowers have run away with them. But those are mostly on guided tours, and they pay for the privilege.
We in the Vélib movement are the true descendants of the Free French Forces (so long as we remember to change bikes every half-hour). And whether we like it or not, we also share the Resistance fighters' approach to protective headgear. Although the Vélib comes with many accessories fitted as standard - lights, mudguard, basket, lock - the organisers stopped short of providing a helmet. Most of us don't even have berets.