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PARIS - A day of pomp and emotion, mingled with his first taste of life at the top political table, awaits Nicolas Sarkozy as he takes over as France's head of state today.
The 52-year-old descendant of immigrants will fulfil a lifetime's ambition by ascending to the Elysee
Palace, assuming the sweeping powers accorded to the President under the French constitution.
Few will blame Sarkozy if he feels conflicting feelings when he takes over from Jacques Chirac, 74.
A quarter-century ago, Chirac was Sarkozy's mentor, grooming the young man with positions in the Gaullist movement and then in the lower reaches of Government.
But as Chirac's 12 years in the presidency staggered to a close, with a country divided and adrift in problems, the father figure seemed to be transformed in Sarkozy's eyes into an object of pathos, even derision.
In the end, there was thinly disguised hatred between them as Chirac, through his surrogates, sought to block Sarkozy's bid for top office. Sarkozy, clever and determined, triumphed at every step, wresting control of the party founded by Chirac and securing the presidency in the May 6 elections.
The crowning point of the almost Oedipal relationship between the two men comes today when Chirac greets Sarkozy on the steps of the presidential palace for a sabre-drawn honour salute by the Republican Guard.
After being sworn in as President, Sarkozy will be handed the secret codes for the "force de frappe", the nuclear missiles that are on 24-hour deployment aboard French submarines.
A 21-gun salute will be fired at the Invalides military hospital, whose golden dome houses the body of Napoleon.
Sarkozy then rides up the Champs-Elysees for a ceremony to relight the flame at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe, followed by the laying of wreaths at the statue of his hero, Charles de Gaulle, and at a clearing in the Bois de Boulogne park where French students were killed by the Nazis in 1944.
He then goes on his first foreign trip as head of state, flying immediately to Berlin for dinner with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country's alliance with France is one of the foundations of post-World War II Europe.
The meeting may indicate Sarkozy's views of the future of Franco-German relations, which suffered periods of strain and stagnation under Chirac. And it may also reveal whether the controversial "European constitution" has any future.
Merkel hopes to amend and revive the charter, even though it was rejected in 2005 by French and Dutch voters. Sarkozy, in his election campaign, rubbished the idea of a fix, saying it had already been rejected by the French public and he would not submit it to them a second time.
He favours a nuts-and-bolts reform of the European Union's decision-making institutions rather than the grandiose constitution.
On the domestic front, Sarkozy's first job will be to name a Cabinet.
With an eye on elections next month to the National Assembly, he is under pressure to appoint a few leftwingers and centrists to bear out his promise to be an "inclusive" president.
The shoo-in for Prime Minister is Francois Fillon, one of Sarkozy's closest lieutenants.
Loyalists such as Brice Hortefeux, Jean-Louis Borloo and Patrick Devedjian, as well as the trusted Defence Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, can also expect top slots.
Alain Juppe, the former premier who was disgraced in a political-financing scandal, is rumoured to be set for a comeback.
A surprise appointment, according to the Paris press, may be that of Bernard Kouchner as Foreign Minister. Kouchner is a humanitarian who founded Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and who was Health Minister in a past Socialist Government.
Sarkozy's convincing victory over the Socialist Segolene Royal gives him a mandate for a conservative agenda that includes liberalising France's employment laws, scaling back taxation and labour charges and reducing the powers of the public-sector trade unions.
To implement these reforms effectively, though, he needs a majority in the National Assembly - and to get this victory, he needs to look active and presidential and keep the opposition weakened and divided in the weeks ahead.
The avuncular Chirac shuffles off into retirement after nearly half a century in politics.
He and his wife, Bernadette, will move into a 180sq m luxury apartment overlooking the Seine owned by the family of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese millionaire Prime Minister who was assassinated in 2005.
The couple face a test of their own in the coming months: Chirac could be questioned by prosecutors in connection with financial sleaze dating to the time when he was mayor of Paris.
As president, Chirac enjoyed immunity from prosecution while he was in office.
What happens next - how swiftly and how vigorously he will be investigated - is a test for the French justice system and ultimately for Sarkozy himself.
