"It's a feeling of lost glory," said Perrossier, sheltering under the arch from a spring squall. "The French have lost the aura they once had, and France -- barring a few small exceptions -- no longer occupies the place it used to internationally."
Philippe Souleau, a history teacher shepherding a party of schoolchildren, was gloomier still: "France no longer has military strength worth speaking of. It is no longer economically competitive, and all this means is that it has become a second-tier nation internationally and diplomatically. Its voice is no longer heard by all."
This malaise has translated into a volatile and unsettled election campaign, with surprises and suspense, and led by candidates promising change but none of the shock therapy that may be necessary to revive French fortunes.
Incumbent Jacques Chirac's decision, at 74, not to seek reelection ensures that the two-round vote April 22 and May 6 will usher in a new era, no matter who wins. That prospect has energized the electorate: Voter registration is up by percentages not seen in at least three decades.
After 12 years of Chirac, France almost certainly will get its first leader born after World War II. It might, in another first, be a woman: the Socialists' Ségolène Royal. Or it may be the right's Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant. Or farmer's son Francois Bayrou, who bills himself as the centrist between the two main candidates.
With the vote splitting three or more ways in polls, and many voters making their mind up late, no one can confidently predict the winner. The problems the winner inherits are not new, and have defied solutions before:
The large national debt, proportionately almost the same as the US debt, which will limit the new president's room to spend France back into economic and mental health.
An economy that has stagnated at around 1.5 percent annual average growth since Chirac's 2002 reelection while Germany's is recovering and China's and Britain's have leapfrogged ahead.
Unemployment that remains stubbornly above 8 percent and topping 20 percent among the under-25s. That age group led three weeks of riots in 2005 in depressed housing projects.
The riots confronted the French with a reality they had long chosen to overlook: of a vast, angry underclass consisting largely of Africans and Arabs distanced from ancestral family values but shut out of the French cultural and economic mainstream.
