Two voters stared at a sloppy collage of campaign posters plugging presidential candidates and their vision for France. Both looked perplexed, even tense, as they weighed the decision facing their troubled nation in Sunday's ballot.
Should they choose Nicolas Sarkozy, blunt, reformist and results-oriented but frightening to many French? Or Segolene Royal, the smiling, feminist mother-figure with a more cautious plan for France? Or will dark-horse centrist Francois Bayrou pull a surprise?
The picturesque Paris landscape will look and smell the same Monday morning, with tour buses rumbling down the Champs-Elysees and the buttery aromas from croissants wafting from the boulangerie.
But France itself will have taken a crucial step toward shaping its future.
Voters Sunday pare down a field of 12 candidates to two favorites who they feel have the clearest vision of where the nation should _ or shouldn't _ be going. Those winners then have two weeks to draw voters to their camp before the May 6 final round.
The successor to Jacques Chirac, who is stepping down after 12 years as president, must steer a nuclear power in an insecure world, revive a large and listless economy, invigorate a downbeat work force, incorporate alienated young Muslims.
It's a daunting job, and restless French voters don't seem to know themselves who is best-suited for it, with about one-third of the electorate undecided before the vote. The crux of the matter is the result guarantees change _ something the French both crave and fear.
Conservative Sarkozy served in Chirac's government but talks of a "rupture" with the past, including painful reforms of worker-friendly labor laws to make France more competitive.
Socialist Royal says her France would be different because she would be its first woman president. She has tilted away from some of her party's policies, but her economic plan would lean left and reverse even some of the timid reforms of the Chirac era.
Sarkozy and Royal are both in their 50s, aiming to be the first French president born after World War II. They're in tune with youth trends, carrying iPods and appealing to young voters in glitzy Internet campaigns. Both infiltrated the political system from the outside _ Royal as a woman, Sarkozy as the son of a Hungarian immigrant.
Their dynamism could win back voters who sat out the last presidential vote in 2002 or those who cast protest votes for extreme candidates on the left and right. While Sarkozy and Royal lead in polls, those same surveys show that half the French don't want either as president.
Royal might not even make it into the May 6 runoff, if voters stage the "silent revolution" sought by farmer's son Bayrou, who has tapped voter frustration with the left-right divide.
Hovering on the far right is Jean-Marie Le Pen, eager to repeat his shock upset of 2002, when he reached the runoff with Chirac and beat out Socialist Lionel Jospin.
"It's an important choice. I feel like all the things that used to be important don't carry weight," said Jean-Louis Margaux, standing before the wall of campaign posters in central Paris.
Margaux, a retired teacher, feels betrayed by the left he long supported, as France's political spectrum has gradually shifted right.
The six candidates on the far left are likely to get less support than in 2002, and their anti-globalization rallying cry has lost its force as they've proven powerless to stop the juggernaut of borderless free markets.
French multinationals reap benefits from global business. Both Sarkozy and, to a lesser extent, Royal see globalization's upside, though they want to make it less painful for workers by making companies pay for moving jobs abroad.
More broadly, voters are concerned about France's relations with a world in which the French accent is getting harder to hear. French entreaties against the Iraq war ultimately went ignored, and France's rejection of greater EU integration sidelined a country that once helped propel the union.
France is a medium-sized state with medium-sized influence, and that hurts for those clinging to past French grandeur. Sarkozy seems ready to build a new pro-American French foreign policy, and proudly shook U.S. President George W. Bush's hand last year. Royal said she would never shake Bush's hand without letting him know what she thought of his policies first.
France's economy is still the second-largest in the euro zone, and the health of the European currency depends to a degree on whether the next president can stimulate growth, which lagged under Chirac.
Sarkozy offers the bolder plan for growth, by getting the French to work more and cutting taxes. Royal would raise the minimum wage and subsidize youth jobs.
New jobs are the only solution for the rundown housing projects scattered beyond France's cities, plagued by discrimination, poverty, illiteracy and dependence on state handouts. The landscape remains little changed since riots in 2005 forced France and its leaders to acknowledge their problems.
Sarkozy has made a career out of striving for the presidency. If he loses, it will be at the hands of a powerful "Anything But Sarkozy" push by those on the left who say his "rupture" suggests violent, enforced change.
Compact, tenacious and unafraid to ruffle feathers, Sarkozy is the most polished of the candidates. He sought to soften his image by discussing his marital troubles on national TV.
Royal, meanwhile, floated the idea of a presidential bid just 16 months ago and skyrocketed to popularity as the fractured left's best bet to beat Sarkozy.
She struck a chord with voters tired of politics by paternalistic men from elite schools, and through a months-long "listening campaign" across the country gathering voter wishes.
If Royal makes the runoff, she will have scored a victory for a Socialist Party at odds with itself since it was shut out of the 2002 runoff by Le Pen and since it split in 2005 over European integration.
If she fails, the party's future may be in doubt after decades as a central player in French politics.
Bayrou in the runoff at Royal's expense could realign the French political spectrum. Polls suggest Bayrou _ from a minor party with few allies _ would win a faceoff with Sarkozy.
Whoever wins May 6 will face legislative elections in June that determine whether the new president gets a parliamentary majority to implement change.
Until then, voters are mulling how, and how much, they want the next president to renovate France.
Rodney Geres, a 35-year-old who works in finance, was undecided days before the vote.
"I think the French people really want change," he said. "And I don't think any of the candidates' platforms give really give any clear sense of change or direction."
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