They can be seen in the systematic running of red lights and breaking of speed limits, or in the utterly different responses you get if you walk into a shop or a restaurant as 1) a stranger or 2) a frequent customer.French public life used to work, under veneers of democracy and law, by roughly the same kind of clientelism. France was a kind of autocratic democracy in which the state – although not always the government of the day – had great and untrammelled power. Politicians and bureaucrats came to regard themselves as the incarnation of the people’s sovereignty, and therefore above the law.At its best, this attitude allowed for flexible, well-oiled government; at its worst, it allowed a kind of institutional corruption, hardly recognised as such, to thrive. François Mitterrand came to power in 1981, promising a new beginning. In practice, he substituted left-wing cronyism for right-wing cronyism, and it proved, if anything, even more arrogantly rapacious than its predecessor.The French judiciary used to be part of the self-policing establishment network; it conceived of its role as protecting the state and the system, rather than protecting the people or the law.

Since the late 1980s, the judiciary – especially the independent corps of investigating magistrates, or juges d’instruction – has changed sides. The press and public have also lost patience with the unaccountable politico-bureaucratic élite; in particular, the cover-up of the contamination of French blood banks by AIDS-infected blood opened many eyes.There are other forces at work. The fact that European Union law takes precedence over national law has weakened the old amorphous influence of the state apparatus. It has boosted the power of law, and of lawyers, of all kinds in France.But more than anything, this transformation the moral climate of French politics is the work of a handful of crusading magistrates.

In part, the juges d’instruction have been inspired by the example of their Italian counterparts; in part, there has been a generational change within the magistracy. The charge has been led by such fearsome – and fearless – characters as Eva Joly, the Norwegian-born judge who brought down the crooked entrepreneur-politician-football boss Bernard Tapie, and who has led the investigation into the complex financial and amorous affairs of Mr Dumas.Investigating magistrates have (by British standards) extraordinary powers. Ms Joly threw Mr Dumas’s mistress, Christine Deviers-Joncour, into jail for three months without charge in an attempt to extract a confession. Philippe Courroye, the magistrate investigating the Angolan arms affair, treated Jean-Christophe Mitterrand with ill-disguised contempt after arresting him last month. He “sweated hate”, according to the late President’s eldest son. At one point, when filling in routine interview forms, the magistrate turned to Jean-Christophe and snarled: “Father’s first name?”The Mitterrand clan complained bitterly about such lÿse-majesté.

Danielle Mitterrand, the President’s widow, described her arrested son as a “hostage”. The same wounded arrogance has been displayed by Mr Dumas and Mr Chirac It is not just that they insist they are innocent. They also seem to say that, as great men, they have a right to remain above suspicion. The law is for little people.The centre-left newspaper Le Monde, a warm supporter of President Mitterrand in his day, commented: “When we hear Jean-Christophe Mitterrand complain that he is being victimised because of his name, we have the impression that he is really complaining that he is being denied the indulgence which, he believes, that name merits.”In other words, parts of the French establishment, both right and left, still don’t get it. They were brought up in a world of haughty impunity in which power conferred as many privileges as responsibilities. They regard the turning of the ordinary process of law against themselves as a “conspiracy”.