IN DEATH, just as in life, Mr Francois Mitterrand was determined to secure his place in history. As this century's longest serving French leader, he left an indelible mark on the even course of modern events. Now, in death, he will repose with his ancestors, humble though they may be, in the family tomb at Jarnac in the south west of France.
Since leaving office in May, the Socialist president has left aside party politics to concentrate on his private relationships with friends and family. But those last months took the form of an extended farewell. For Mr Mitterrand's retirement was dominated by the prostate cancer which slowly engulfed him.
Instead of fighting it, towards the end Mr Mitterrand talked openly about accepting death. Using the services of a death counsellor, he took on a new role as a spiritual guide for the dying and bereaved.
His counsellor, Ms Marie de Hennezel, wrote a moving book about dying, La Mort In time (Intimate Death), which is currently in the best seller lists thanks to a preface written by her most celebrated client. The "most beautiful lesson" of her book, the former president wrote, was that death can be "an accomplishment".
Coming at the age of 79, Mr Mitterrand's death was the accomplishment of an extraordinarily full and adventurous life. He became president at the age of 64, just as most working men are about to retire. The 14 years he spent in power were the crowning achievement of a long career in politics, putting his whole life into historical perspective.
The historical perspective has always been uppermost in Mr Mitterrand's mind. A man of remarkable cunning political commentators used to call him the Sphinx he looked to the long term implications of his actions. From the very start, his presidency set itself high historical standards. He chose to celebrate his electoral victory in 1981 by laying wreaths on the tombs of great Socialist and Resistance heroes in the Republic's mausoleum, the Pantheon. That, emphasis on symbols never left him.
It was perhaps in the field of international relations that this sense of the importance of history made its biggest contribution. His life had spanned two world wars and he was convinced that peace was the most precious gift that could be endowed on future generations. Despite changes of political direction on the domestic front, he never wavered in his commitment to European construction, certain that this was a guarantee of future security.
He understood better than anyone the importance of keeping France and Germany together in the driving seat of the European Union managing to keep this sometimes unruly ally on the track through his close relationship with the German Chancellor Dr Helmut Kohl.
Like his successor, President Jacques Chirac, Mr Mitterrand armed in power in 1981 on his third attempt at the presidency. He had spent much of the previous quarter century with a reputation as a loser, in opposition to De Gaulle and his `right wing successors, seen as a yesterday's man'
After his ministerial involvement in many precarious governments under the Fourth Republic.
A latecomer to socialism, he used his political acumen and, brought together disparate left wing groups to found the modern Socialist Party in 1971. By sheer determination, he made it to the Elysee a decade later, and in the process accustomed the French to the idea that there could be a political alternative to right wing rule without causing a revolution.
The explosion of social reforms which followed his election was, short lived. In a few months, he and his Socialist majority in the National Assembly abolished the death penalty, reduced the working week, increased paid holidays and the minimum wage, as well as nationalising certain banks and industries. But people's new spending power was eaten up by 14 per cent inflation and three humiliating devaluations.
BY LATE 1982, austerity became the order of the day, and the president to modernising France and making French industry more competitive.
In retrospect, the Socialists achieved what the right could never have done long years of relative social peace during a wages freeze shipyards, coal mines and steel works allowed to close while gains from speculative capital galloped ahead. The successful "strong franc" policy espoused by Mr Mitterrand's last socialist prime minister, Mr Pierre Beregovoy, won the respect of international monetary bodies, but at the sacrifice of everything the Socialists had once believed in. Unemployment rose inexorably from a million to 3.3 million, alienating the party's working class support.
Mr Mitterrand's sense of history and his passion for literature did not blind him to modern social trends. He was always ready to listen to young people, which gave rise to his most affectionate nick name as president, Ton ton, a childish word for uncle. Under his rule, youth culture flowered, even if job prospects for young people became more bleak.
History and modernism were united in Mr Mitterrand's championing of architecture. Of all the French presidents this century, he did most to leave his mark on Paris in the public monuments he commissioned. He will be remembered for the elegant glass Pyramid of the Louvre, the cube shaped Arch of La Defence, the Bastille Opera and the towering national library, among other projects. The satirical Canard Enchaine dubbed him "Tonton Khamon" (a play on Tutankhamun) for his desire to achieve immortality in this way.
These vestiges of the Mitterrand era are in Paris but the president always believed the true soul of the country was to be found in la France profonde in the provinces.
Those roots were in the small town of Jarnac, near Bordeaux, where his father was station was that a time when the position carried a high status. Mitterrand senior later became even more of a local notable as head of a vinegar producers' federation. The three sons brought up in this comfortably off Catholic family all became nationally known figures.
Educated in Catholic boarding schools, then in law in Paris, the young Francois flirted with right wing ideology in his early years, and nurtured a hatred of Marxism. His later conversion to the left was to earn him the reputation of an opportunist, or at best a pragmatist.
It was during the war that the romance but also the complexity of Mr Mitterrand's character was confirmed. Early service as an infantry sergeant on the front line earned him his first Croix de Guerre before his 1940 capture by the Germans. He won a second for his role in the Resistance. In between, he was to experience times of exhilaration but also a keen sense of national humiliation and personal disappointment.
Before leaving for the front, Mr Mitterrand became engaged to a young woman who abandoned him while he was in a PoW camp. He only discovered this on his third escape under fire. An earlier one had led to recapture after a series of adventures, including a 700 kms/450 mile walk to the Swiss frontier.
Besides the shock of this romantic rebuff, his wartime experiences also included a senior post in the collaborationist Vichy regime, when he received Marshal Philippe Petain's highest award, the Francisque. But he also worked for the Resistance under the code name of Morland, which brought him in contact with literary figures like Marguerite Duras and Albert Camus.
It was also the time when he met his wife, Danielle, then still a schoolgirl. During a meeting of Resistance workers in the Paris apartment of Danielle's sister, Christine, Mr Mitterrand saw a photograph of Danielle on the table and asked who it was. When Christine told him, he said "She's beautiful. I'm going to marry her." They were married in seven months.
After Mr Mitterrand's re election to the presidency in 1988, his last years in office were over shadowed by revelations about the more compromising of these wartime experiences. He presided over the epoch when France was struggling to come to terms with its Vichy past. But many of his supporters were disgusted when Mr Mitterrand admitted that since he had been in the Elysee he had passed cosy dinners in the company of Rene Bousquet, Vichy's former police chief who had been responsible for deporting thousands of Jews from France.
He also authorised other revelations about his private life, such as the existence of his illegitimate 20 year old daughter, Mazarine. It was as though he was preparing for History's reckoning and wanted to tell his story in his own terms.
"Fourteen years is a long time," he said in a television interview in the autumn of 1994, referring to his term of office. It was three years longer even than that of Gen de Gaulle or the Emperor Napoleon. Towards the end of it, the public had lost interest in him and the president had lost his political influence.
"We cannot know what a man is worth until the end," he wrote, in 1980. Already, after eight months of the clumsy and controversial rule of President Chirac, historical perspective is redressing the balance for the former president. In a book of conversations with the Nobel Prize winning author, Mr Elie Wiesel, published earlier this year, Mr Mitterrand said he would like his epitaph to be the same as that of the former, German chancellor, Mr Willy Brandt "I did what I could.
History may accord him much more.