In a moment of exasperation, Gen de Gaulle once lamented that it was impossible to govern a country with 265 different cheeses. At the end of 1998, the acute individualism of the French again seemed to be pulling them in several directions. Lionel Jospin's pink, red and green coalition began to fray over the question of illegal immigration. The government suffered a major setback when the right-wing opposition derailed its Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS) - an attempt to give legal status to couples living together outside marriage, including homosexuals. A proposed reform of government-owned radio and television stations had to be scrapped, and the country muddled through what has become the annual strike season.
Prime Minister Jospin and President Jacques Chirac are almost certain to compete for the presidency in 2002, and the prime minister's difficulties seemed to reinvigorate the President. Their hitherto smooth "cohabitation" turned more combative.
At the beginning of December Mr Chirac held up Mr Jospin's reform of the justice system, then made a speech calling for the "revitalisation of public life". In the second week of industrial action that had already cost the French national railway Ffr 200 million (£23.8 million), Mr Chirac said minimum transport services ought to be guaranteed during strikes.
An opinion poll showed 82 per cent of the public supported the idea, but the communist Transport Minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot - a former railway worker - called the President's intervention an attack on the right to strike, which is enshrined in the French constitution.
The year started and ended with strikes by the French unemployed. It may sound farcical, but French jobless strike by staging raids on luxury restaurants and sit-ins in dole offices.
Air France pilots walked out days before the World Cup was to begin in June, then the country pulled together for a rare interlude of harmonious labour relations until the autumn, when bus drivers, lycee students, senior citizens, pig farmers, librarians and museum employees went on strike or held protest marches.
For the first time, a few French commentators began to refer to industrial action - the pre-Thatcherite scourge of Britain - as the French disease.
To a foreigner, one of the most shocking things was the apparent nonchalance with which vandalism was tolerated during the demonstrations by the lyceens.
Last summer, when British and German soccer hooligans laid waste to sections of Marseille and Lens, there was outrage, but when young men and women from the poor suburbs of Paris broke into cafes and shops and looted en masse, the lyceens were encouraged to continue demonstrating. They were undergoing their "apprenticeship of citizenship", the education minister announced.
That the presence of hundreds of thousands of teenagers in the streets was bound to cause problems did not seem to be a consideration, and the government - that is to say the French taxpayer - footed the bill for the damage.
Change in France, the French claim, cannot be accomplished by smooth transition. It comes in jolts, through clashes and collisions. The French propensity for demonstrating - and on occasion rioting - is often portrayed as a legacy of 1789 and subsequent revolutions.
I was surprised to find during the October marches by lyceens that the demonstrators saw no continuity between the Jacobins and themselves. They thought there was nothing particularly French about their behaviour, and assumed that people in other countries expressed their demands in the same way.
One of the marchers I met was a well-dressed, 46-year-old woman, a legal adviser in a large company, who attends as many street demonstrations as possible - regardless of the cause. She had started taking part in marches as a student in the 1970s and enjoyed it. "Tear gas, smashed windows, barricades - that sort of thing doesn't frighten me," she boasted. "I adore demonstrations."
France's fitful mood seems rooted in misgivings over globalisation and economic liberalism, a subliminal fear of losing their identity and secure existence. A study published by the Sofres polling institute this autumn provided a fascinating assessment of the French mentality at the end of the century.
Using a technique called semiometry, where attitudes are defined by the interviewee's choice of words, researchers found that negative words - including deserted, doubt, wall, labyrinth, immobile, and distrust - have gained the most ground over the past eight years. Positive words associated with the 1980's belief in success and business initiative - such as elite, creative, clever, money, property, efficient - have declined dramatically.
The researchers explained the pessimism of the French public by the growth of unemployment (which now appears to be reversing), the collapse of ideologies since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the loss of confidence in politicians and institutions because of corruption scandals. In this decade, they concluded, the French had become less materialistic. At the same time they have come to place a greater value on detachment, modesty and humility - perhaps not by coincidence the qualities associated with Prime Minister Jospin.
The anxiety and pessimism have lifted somewhat this year, but researchers stressed that the boost in morale is fragile. France's World Cup victory on July 12th did more to change the way the French see themselves than any event in years.
"We never got over 1940," a French colleague told me. "Since the second World War we saw ourselves as losers. We knew we were better than everyone else, but before, at the last minute, something would go wrong - and the Croatians or the Brazilians or whoever would win - and we would be superior losers."