This flurry of activity puts Mr. Vimont at the center of a jam-packed bilateral agenda for rapprochement between Paris and Washington over such complex issues as Iraq, Iran, NATO, the European Union and the global environment.

“There is a tremendous opportunity to renew the Franco-American relationship, and Ambassador Vimont will be leading that effort in Washington,” says Antony Blinken, staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Besides being the consummate diplomat, he has deep knowledge of the transatlantic and global agenda.”

As the former chief of staff in France’s Foreign Ministry, Vimont served three consecutive ministers over the last five years – Dominique de Villepin, Michel Barnier and Philippe Douste- Blazy – and has been involved in some of the hottest international dossiers. He is also known in diplomatic circles as a bit of a workaholic. Legend has it that when Parisian diplomats drove by the Quai d’Orsay late at night, on the way back from their dinner parties, they would inevitably spot only one lit window on the façade of the imposing foreign ministry that overlooks the Seine river: It was Pierre Vimont, burning the midnight oil.

His passionate and tireless commitment won over President Sarkozy as he sought to replace Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, called back to the Elysée Palace to head France’s newly-created National Security Council, modeled on the American one.

A career diplomat and graduate of France’s elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, Vimont is very familiar with Washington where, as the son of a diplomat, he lived as a child. Over the course of his distinguished career, he has held a number of key posts, including ambassador to the European Union, chief of staff to the Minister for European Affairs and director for scientific, technical and educational cooperation. Thirty years after joining the French Foreign Service, he returns to the United States at a sensitive moment in a relationship that has weathered its share of storms.

Alluding, in flawless English, to an agenda worthy of his dynamic President, Vimont’s vision for his tenure reaches far beyond immediate and pressing strategic issues. “This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de Lafayette. It is an important occasion to celebrate the remarkable things that France has brought to America, the solidarity between our two countries that is sometimes overlooked.”

To launch this celebration, he has already hosted members of the Congressional French Caucus and plans festivities through June 2008 at his ornate residence that sits on five lush acres overlooking Rock Creek Park with gardens reminiscent of the Tuileries.

“People would always tell me that this house is so French,” muses François Bujon de l’Estang, who served as ambassador from 1995 to 2001. “The irony is that, with its neo-Tudor design, it is anything but French.” But, he adds, “What makes it French is the art de vivre.”

The residence, whose breathtaking interiors evoke various periods of French design, from the grand siècle of Louis XIV to the Empire of Napoléon, and whose masterpiece is the red grand salon with its Bonnard painting, has always been the site of some of the capital’s greatest social and intellectual gatherings. Even at the height of the Iraq crisis that replaced French fries with “freedom fries” in the Congressional lexicon, one could spot an amusing mix of Francophiles, and even an occasional neoconservative, sharing sumptuous meals and exquisite wines in the beautiful boiserie dining room.

Ambassador Vimont will no doubt carry on the long tradition of his predecessors in maintaining the French residence as a place where Washington’s left, right and center can debate, argue and, in the end, toast one another.