LITTLE more than a week ago, in that rarefied world where governments distil their cocktails of politics and economics, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned as France's finance minister on November 2nd, was the envy of his colleagues: a report by the IMF, passed on to the press at Mr Strauss-Kahn's immodest request, was merely the latest plaudit to his handling of the economy. Indeed, the Fund's only real criticism was of France's forthcoming 35-hour working week—for which, at least in private, Mr Strauss-Kahn has never had much time. Surely DSK, as the politically trendy like to call him, could extend a business trip to Vietnam with a couple of days' well-deserved holiday.

Alas, no. Even as the IMF's favourable findings were being trumpeted, so was the news that the Paris prosecution service was asking for DSK to be formally investigated for fraud. The stay in Vietnam was curtailed in favour of an early meeting back in Paris with the prime minister, Lionel Jospin. Two days later, Mr Strauss-Kahn, normally so suave but now simply grim, stood before the cameras and his dispirited, almost shell-shocked staff to hand in his cards “because of morality and a sense of responsibility. For me, it is inconceivable that a minister can stay in office when there is the slightest hint of a judicial procedure that might affect the whole government.”

In which case, when can this particular minister return to office? Few would bet that DSK will satisfy the legal scrutineers quickly enough to be back in government within weeks, rather than months or years. Pride, it seems, has truly come before a fall.

But the pride, at least, is justified. In a coalition government that marries Socialists of varying hues with Greens and Communists, the urbane DSK was the pragmatic intellectual, able somehow to persuade suspicious ideologues of the need to embrace the euro, privatise state champions, cut taxes, allow stock options—all, admittedly, within a programme that also aimed at EU-wide tax harmonisation and posited that free markets should be tamed. Moreover, the polyglot Mr Strauss-Kahn, fluent in German, English and Spanish, and with a (third) wife, Anne Sinclair, who until 1997 had her own political chat-show on television, was the perfect man to smooth-talk journalists and placate suspicious foreigners. Who else could be on easy terms with the mutually incompatible Gordon Brown of Britain and Oskar Lafontaine of Germany (who even out of office has kept in touch)? Perhaps it helps to have had an academic past, writing articles with titles such as “The savings-consumption arbitrage in French econometric models” and “Saving and social security: a tentative survey”.

Whether the fall is justified is another matter. Shortly before the Socialists' victory in the general election of 1997, a student insurance fund known as MNEF paid Mr Strauss-Kahn FFr603,000 ($112,000) for legal help in arranging for Compagnie Générale des Eaux (now Vivendi) to inject some much-needed capital into an MNEF subsidiary that dealt in property. The allegation is that DSK did no actual work, and that MNEF's documents were forgeries, pre-dated to turn fiction into fact and so to explain payments into either Mr Strauss-Kahn's own pockets or those of the Socialist Party. For his part, Mr Strauss-Kahn insists that he has records, certified as reasonable by a former president of the bar, for eight hours' work a month over 25 months. “If I am resigning, and I say it with conviction, it is in no way because I feel guilty As a citizen, I want now to be able to explain myself quickly before the judiciary, not just on the reality of my work or my honorariums but also on any irregularities of form that may have been committed.”

At which point the cynics may yawn. Perhaps this will be yet another French political scandal, albeit small beer compared with some previous pots de vin, destined to drag through the years as the judicial system bends this way and that to the pressures of politics. The mayor of Paris, Jean Tiberi, and his wife Xavière are at last in the courtroom, some three years after a brave examining magistrate searched their flat (with the police unwilling to accompany him) for evidence of corruption in a case that has also implicated a former conservative prime minister, Alain Juppé, and could yet involve Jacques Chirac, a former mayor of Paris who then rose to be president.

However, national cultures do not change overnight, so why bother about the cynics and their justified suspicion that, in the end, neither left nor right in France will legislate for a genuine reform of the judicial system? More important in the short term is the political fall-out from Mr Strauss-Kahn's departure.

With luck, the damage to the Jospin government will be only temporary. Certainly, DSK might well have stood for mayor of Paris in 2001, perhaps prising the capital from right-wing control; and in 2002, when Mr Jospin seems set to stand against Mr Chirac for the presidency, DSK might have made a convincing, reassuring prime minister. But by allowing (or persuading?) his loyal friend to resign on what amounts to a point of principle—a notion with scant precedent in France—Mr Jospin has kept his pledge to have a “moral” government. So long as the economy keeps charging ahead and the right keep fighting among themselves, Mr Jospin may feel sanguine enough.

But his optimism may be misplaced. One reason for the success and popularity of the Jospin government was that DSK at finance was a counterweight to Martine Aubry, the 35-hour week's forceful proponent, at the labour ministry. If the new finance minister, Christian Sautter, lacks the kilos to keep the government's balance, Mr Jospin will surely be tempted to interfere himself. And unhappily for those who want a modern, deregulating France in a modern, deregulating EU, the prime minister's instincts tie him to what Tony Blair would call “Old Socialism”.

In short, Mr Strauss-Kahn will be missed. Just before he bowed out, he had predicted: “If we don't do anything stupid, France can enjoy rather a long period of growth—six or seven years or so.” What a pity if his own mistakes risk stunting that growth.