THE first time I attended one of President Francois Mitterrand's press conferences at the Elysee Palace was in 1989. I was a newly appointed correspondent for The Irish Times and the President was at the height of his powers. Comfortably re elected the previous year and enjoying the prestige of directing France through the hi centenary of its Revolution, he was in sparkling form.
At a time when the seat of power in the country was still the Elysee, before Mr Mitterrand's failing health and influence of later years, the gilded salon was packed with domestic and foreign media people. Alone behind his desk, Mr Mitterrand revelled in the occasion. Those who took the microphone to ask a question were teased, corrected, chided and elegantly flirted with (if female).
There was always that sense that he was in control of events. His masterful cunning and great respect for the power of words meant that he never tripped up with a hasty or inappropriate remark, however provocative the question.
President Mitterrand was a man of the long view. The first Socialist to come to power in France for some three decades, he chose the Pantheon, the mausoleum of the Republic's heroes, the stage his inaugural ceremony after his election in 1981. He did so to demonstrate that he was taking his place in the annals of French history as a direct successor to men like the Socialist leader, Jean Jaure's, and the Resistance leader, Jean Moulin. He never took his eyes off that ambition.
The long view was also the wide view. While he was acutely aware of the significance of events as they unfolded, his reading was literature. Even between rallies on the campaign trail, he was most likely to be found immersed in a volume of poetry or a Russian or Latin American novel.
His leadership was undoubtedly overshadowed in his final years in office by the revelations of his wartime collaboration with the Vichy regime, and by his illness. But he left significant achievements in his 14 years as head of state.
As a newly elected president, he abolished the death penalty which was still allowing criminals to be guillotined as late as the 1970s. More generally, Mr Mitterrand and his Socialist regime oversaw the dramatic modernisation of France, to a large extent reconciling the entrenched adversaries of left and right.
By the Socialists U turn towards austerity in 1983, he also, inadvertently, started the process that was to reconcile the left to capital and market forces. This, allowed the aggressive expansion of French business on the international scene, though it was at the cost of some three million unemployed by the time Mr Mitterrand left office last May.
By his unfailing commitment to European construction, he also reconciled a slim majority of French people to a European future when he personally campaigned for and achieved a "yes" vote in the Maastricht referendum in September 1992. Flew French people will forget the president's live television performance when he spent over two hours answering the concerns of a selection of "ordinary people" in a studio.
President Mitterrand was often Florentine in his political manoeuvrings, but what glowed through the cynicism was his dignity and personal courage as when he went to a Green wave Bundestag in Bonn and argued for the presence of US missiles on German soil. In March 1982, as the first European leader to visit Israel, he argued in the Knesset for a Palestinian homeland.
That same courage was evidence at the end, in the face of the suffering from the prostate cancer that finally killed him. Exactly a year ago, Mr Mitterrand offered his traditional New Year's wishes to the assembled press at the Elysee for the 14th and, we all knew, the last time. His face etched with pain, he sat and addressed us unprompted for two hours, speaking frankly and often with great humour.
Yesterday it was the turn of his successor, President Jacques Chirac, to make his first New Year's wishes to the press. Instead, he came straight from Mr Mitterrand's bedside to announce the news. Mr Chirac's old sparring partner had upstaged him one last time.