De Villepin's gracious exit from the Matignon was easy on the ear, if not quite evocative of his renowned love of poetry, and he was warmly applauded by his successor.
But it would surely be an exaggeration to suggest that he has left his mark on French politics during his two years in the job.
Jacques Chirac's choice to replace the hapless if likeable Jean-Pierre Raffarin after the debacle of the EU constitution referendum in 2005, de Villepin got off to a reasonable enough start.
It all began to go wrong for him after the rioting that tore across France later the same year.
He had the interesting and honourable idea of getting young people, in particular the embittered, disadvantaged youth of the grim suburban estates, into work by making France's famously rigid labour market a little more flexible.
His chosen measure - the CPE employment law - would have made it easier for employers to get rid of uneconomic, under-performing or unsuitable young workers.
It was a genuine but flawed response to a genuine problem. The measure might have helped a little, and was really rather modest. But it provoked the highly excessive reaction on the streets that we witnessed in the spring on 2006.
De Villepin managed to go from a position of absolute determination to stick to the policy to one of meekly acquiescing in Chirac's characteristic appeasement of the power and noise of the street.
This was a man who had conducted himself with some courage in the way he defended France's opposition to war in Iraq. He was reviled by hawkish critics in Britain and the USA, but stood firm.
His actions a year ago were closer to cowardice; as a simple matter of principle, he ought to have resigned rather than cave in to Chirac's will and go along with the abandonment of a policy he held dear and had promised to maintain.
Ducks do not get much lamer, and it has been hard to take de Villepin seriously as a prime minister in the second half of his term.
The well documented history of acrimony between him and Nicolas Sarkozy, at the very time when they were meant to be restoring the credibility of the French government, hardly helped. France, it seems to me, might as well have had no prime minister at all during the past year, so limited has been his impact.
Fillon, Le Mans-born like Mme Salut! and whose wife Penelope is Welsh, may also struggle to shine in view of the sheer strength of the new president's personality.
But he was described by French television this lunchtime as a firm, passionate reformer committed to the changes he believes the country needs.
We'll see what he is made of when the going gets a bit rougher. But he did pay little heed to the rumpus on the streets over his pensions reforms, and when education changes of his own provoked a kneejerk reaction from students, some of whom I recall being at a loss when interviewed to explain what they were against and why.
As for the eloquent, flamboyant Dominique de V, it is surely an ideal opportunity to get back to the poetry. And none of the rhyming in that sentence was intended.
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