As Alain Touraine observes: "The main French idea is that there is an absolute contradiction between social good and economic interests. Where else do you hear this, besides maybe Belarus?"

The historic destiny of the left is to use the power of the state to protect the people from the ravages of the marketplace; the loneliness of the endeavor only increases its nobility. As Nicolas Domenach, a political commentator and an editor of the cheeky, leftish magazine Marianne, put it to me: "One could be arrogant, that is to say French, and say that someone must guard against the omnipotence of liberalism. But I would argue that France is not the exception but rather the avant-garde. If we talk again a year from now, you will see counterliberal movements across Europe."

Yet this sense of moral superiority, and the reflexive horror at the unleashed energies of the marketplace, have plainly been losing force as France's per capita wealth falls behind that of countries like Ireland and Britain. Editorials in the center-left Le Monde lambasted Villepin for his high-handed manner but acknowledged the need to reform labor markets. Scholars and journalists routinely speak of a crisis, or a paralysis, gripping the country. Gérard Grunberg, a leading scholar at Sciences Po, told me: "There is no liberal tradition on either the left or the right; there isn't even a place for a social-liberal party, because it would imply an acceptance of labor-market flexibility. It would imply that the state isn't the sole guarantor of the collective interest, which is entrenched in French culture. It is the state that embodies and guarantees the collective interests; the rest is selfish individualism."

...Royal asked me, with the air of someone pulling out a trump card, "Are you in an insecure situation?" Actually, I explained, as a contract writer for this magazine, I have little security.

Royal wasn't going to be put off the scent that easily. "Yes, but how many years does your contract last?"

"I sign a new one every year."

Now she was frankly incredulous. "You could be fired every year?" For all her own experience, Royal apparently viewed précarité as a kind of socioeconomic stigma rather than the price you might choose to pay for freedom.




...Seated beside Royal as she was driven back to Poitiers after an annual awards dinner at a sports club, I mentioned that we hadn't yet discussed some of the major issues she would face as president. What about terrorism? And Iraq? Royal responded with a surprising question of her own: "Would you ask this of a man?"

"Of course I would."

"If you were interviewing Laurent Fabius, you would never ask him, 'Can you lay out your planetary vision in 15 minutes?'"

I pointed out that she was, after all, hoping to be president of France. Royal said that it wasn't the right moment; she would present her vision when she was ready. I pressed her. "You're saying it's too early?"

Apparently I had asked once too often. Her smile vanished, and she said: "I refuse to be infantilized by being asked questions which imply that I know nothing, that I'm the result of a media bubble. I haven't heard Fabius or Sarkozy explain their vision of the world and of interplanetary coherence."

Royal's reaction felt so hyperbolic as to be either a cynical ploy — which I doubted — or evidence that her astonishing record of success had barely touched her inner sense of beleaguerment, of victimization. This, too, has become part of the Ségolène legend. Two weeks after our conversation, "Les Guignols," a popular television show that satirizes France's leading political and cultural figures, had a sketch featuring a puppet Ségolène. An interviewer asks, "Are you truly a Socialist candidate?" and Royal, her smile never faltering, shoots back, "You would never ask such a question of a man." At lunch, the waiter suggests "an excellent sole," and she retorts, "You only recommend fish because I'm a woman, and you assume I have to watch what I eat." And when she comes home to François, complaining about the obstacles she must clear as a female politician, her partner, ensconced in his reading chair, soothingly says, "Ah, Ségolène." She cuts him off: "Would you call me Ségolène if I were a man?"