Three days to go before François Hollande transfers the French presidency to Emmanuel Macron and with it the right to call the Elysée home. And he's already found somewhere to hang his hat - my old flat.
As befits an address where journalists once worked and played, 242 rue de Rivoli - on the fifth and top floor, no less, with majestic views stretching from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower and the Tuileries directly opposite - has known some lively times.
There was feverishly hard work but also a succession of well lubricated soirées, cerebral or celebrated visitors and, just occasionally, conduct unbecoming.
Rotten photo of a great view
Should the président-sortant be stumped for the taxi fare, or not wish to burden the state with the cost of an official car, he should find it is a short, pleasant walk from palace to apartment. I did it the other way round several times when The Daily Telegraph's correspondent in Paris.
Taking a right out of the Elysée, he just needs to walk along the swish rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and turn right again down rue Cambon to arrive at the corner of the rue de Rivoli.
Coming into view on his right, he'll see the Paris branch of W H Smith, a handy shop for English newspapers and books should his taste for the language of Shakespeare perk up now he is leaving office.
But passing restaurant Flottes - I remember their confit de canard with some affection - he will take a left into the rue de Rivoli, quickly finding number 242. A cranky and unreliable old lift, if it has not been replaced since M and Mme Salut lived there, may or may not get him the rest of the way to the top floor. The hideous handwritten slogan Mort aux Juifs remembered by another former incumbent Susannah Herbert, will surely have been erased by now.
View from the back kitchen: Monette, the ungovernable French cat (named after her birthplace, the Giverny home of Monet)
We heard about the incoming tenant in one of those "and finally ..." moments of France 2's main evening news.
But will this be his Paris home as he looks around his political heartland in the Corrèze for a suitable family residence, or merely the offices to which he is entitled, along with the cost of employing staff, as the outgoing head of state? Hollande evidently plans to run France s'engage, a foundation promoting private initiatives in the common interest (to combat illiteracy, for example).
There is ample scope for the premises to serve, as they did for us and some of our Telegraph predecessors, as an appartement de fonction, with lots of sleeping accommodation, a splendid lounge for entertainment - it was once described as more like a ballroom - as well as a good-sized office. But it is not yet clear whether he will sleep as well as work there, or retreat on Parisian sojourns to a pied-à-terre elsewhere in the city.
At the dental surgery below, remembered by the incorrigible Mme Salut for the "gorgeous" dentist who treated her there, they say drilling of a builder's sort has been going on non-stop for a fortnight.
That's no surprise. It was a glorious, spacious apartment but all the interior design and fittings had seen better days. "Shabby chic" as another former colleague, Charles Laurence, put it when I alerted Facebook friends to news of the new occupant.
The correspondents who moved into 242 rue re Rivoli, when the top floor was in the hands of the wicked press, had to put up with one drawback.
No business is likely to maintain such a large flat, with five bedrooms and a corridor almost long enough to merit separate stops on Line One of the Metro, for one person with or without partner, plus part-time secretarial (shout out for the brilliant Rebecca Schofield) and cleaning help.
It was also a useful tool for minimising the cost of sending people on assignments to Paris. So the reality of being the bureau chief was that regular visits from head office were to be expected.
Four times a year, the entire fashion department would descend for the Paris shows. They would occupy three of the bedrooms, stock the fridge with food and (lots of) drink, turn the elegant dining room into their office and stage shoots and other events as necessary in the lounge.
That was fine. The fashion editor Hilary Alexander, her writers and photographers were great company and their stays were well planned and set in stone.
As for the other visits, that was fine only up to a point. No one minded when colleagues had a valid reason for an overnight stay, or were friends anyway. But I was once told: "The sport desk secretary wants to come with the family for a long weekend." Someone I barely knew asked: "Can I bring some pals to watch the finale of the Tour de France from your balcony?"
And I can never forget the look of horror on the face of the dance critic who opened the door with her head office-supplied key at the start of what she thought would be a few days en amoureux with her chap between Christmas and New Year.
No one had told her the place was lived in and would be occupied over the festive season. Still less had anyone told me she was coming. The poor woman's first sight on opening the door was that of my two daughters, also visiting from London, coincidentally present in the large entrance lobby.
"Oh no," she eventually exclaimed, declining our offer of drinks and a chat on how to resolve matters before stomping off to find a hotel. "We wanted it last year but were told Boris Johnson had booked it solid for his whole brood."
Hollande is unlikely to encounter such awkward moments. He will never have to shovel a female colleague into bed (a soirée bien arrosée having followed a doubtless exhausting day at work) or stumble across a photographer slumped on a desk at 7am, still drunk from the night before.
Nor, I suspect, will he find himself in competition with Swedish royalty when hosting a France s'engage party. That happened to us when our farewell to Paris shindig coincided with an event organised by other neighbours in the block, the Parisian Swedish Circle, in honour of Princess Victoria. "They stipulated no press," the concierge told me just before I explained how many press there would actually be.
But I hope the outgoing president, who quite likes the company of journalists, remembers the place has history, even if he cannot always live up to it in the way that we all did.
How the incomparable Matt captured the moment of my dismissal
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