The setting was so magnificent that, for a moment, I felt as if I had been transported to a sort of paradise.
My wife and I were attending a wedding last weekend in the grounds of a spectacular 19th century chateau in the Dordogne, a part of France renowned for the beauty of its landscape and architectural heritage.
As we mingled with the other guests, sipping vintage champagne and savouring exquisite canapes, music from an orchestra wafted up through the surrounding trees that were silhouetted against a sky of brilliant blue. This was truly Gallic civilisation at its finest.
Yet, for all the opulence, a profound sense of fragility hung over the scene. I could not escape the feeling that this enchanting world was living on borrowed time, with chaos and collapse looming just over the horizon.
My foreboding had been fuelled by the experience of driving through the Dordogne, where I was surprised at how many towns and villages seem to be in severe decline, something reflected in the shabbiness of many of the properties we passed and the profusion of boarded-up shops.
Indeed, the day of reckoning may come very soon.
France is heading for a major crisis, triggered by the long refusal of its politicians to exercise fiscal restraint and to control its borders.
They have consistently failed to ensure that France lives within its means, preferring instead to dish out a fortune in social security benefits or pursue their grandiose dream of a United States of Europe dedicated to free movement and the erosion of nationhood.
The enormous cost of the above is compounded by lavish spending on the bloated public sector, whose weak management is characterised by a toleration of excessive sick leave and low productivity.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost, with both the bond markets and other European governments growing increasingly anxious about France's potential slide towards national bankruptcy. The scale of its liabilities is frightening.
With its budget deficit - the gulf between the amount it raises in taxes and the amount it spends - at £146 billion or 5.8 per cent of GDP, France is in an even worse fiscal position than Greece.
Incredibly, in the first quarter of this year, the overall debt totalled £2.84 trillion, which amounts to 116 per cent of France's GDP.
That sort of borrowing is completely unsustainable, not least because the French Government has to fork out more than £57 billion a year in interest payments alone. (Britain's equivalent figure is even more terrifying, as it is in excess of £100 billion.)
Things are so bad that, only this week, the French finance minister, Eric Lombard, warned that if the government could not bring spending under control, France might have to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan.
This would be a shameful echo of Britain's humiliating plea for an IMF bailout in 1976, when the Labour government made Britain 'the Sick Man of Europe' through overspending, surrender to trade unions and usual socialist extravagances.
Lombard later withdrew this assessment, denying France was in any danger of 'intervention from the IMF', but it was obvious that his first - unguarded - statement had more than a grain of truth.
Even more candid is the French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, who was appointed to the post by President Emmanuel Macron last December after his predecessor Michel Barnier, the EU's former chief Brexit negotiator, lost a vote of confidence in the National Assembly, France's parliament.
Bayrou is adamant that major cuts worth around £38 billion are required to reduce the budget deficit from 5.8 per cent of GDP to 4.6 per cent.
In order to muster support for his tough stance he has announced a recall of the Assembly timed for September 8.
But far from winning him friends, this move may well prove to be his downfall. The assembled deputies will again debate a motion of no confidence in the government and it looks likely that Bayrou will suffer the same fate as his predecessor, Barnier.
His almost certain ousting illustrates the folly of Sir Keir Starmer in putting so much faith in diplomacy with France to halt the small boats crossing the Channel. If the French government falls, the Anglo-French 'one in, one out' migrant return scheme will probably also collapse.
That said, Starmer's brand of gesture politics is also a stock-in-trade of French politicians.
Occasionally they talk tough about budgetary cuts or ending free movement, but their heart is never in it. Fearful of unpopularity, too many of them still have not recognised what needs to be done to avoid meltdown.
Just as in Britain, there is no appetite among the public or the political class to really tackle the vast cost of social security benefits because so many are now dependent on welfare.
In the same way, the protection of privileged special interests stops reform of the bloated public sector.
Nor are the bulk of the French people willing to live in the real world: a parallel universe in which the government pays its way.
That was made clear in the ferocious protests against President Macron's economic policies staged in 2023 by the Gilets Jaunes, or 'Yellow Vest'. So-called because they demonstrated wearing hi-vis jackets.
While Macron did succeed in forcing through the centrepiece of his programme, a rise in the retirement age from 62 to 64, this consumed so much of his political capital that his ability to drive through any further change was fatally undermined.
And one of the many areas in which he has failed is with immigration.
The most striking conversation I had at the wedding that I mentioned earlier was with a sharp-suited, distinguished-looking company director who has worked throughout Europe and North America.
In perfect English, he explained that his anger is focused on the high rate of immigration which he believes is destroying his country, driving up crime and imposing excessive burdens on French taxpayers.
He had no time for the fashionable claim that new arrivals mostly come to France to work, pointing out that levels of unemployment in the notorious migrant-dominated banlieues - or urban suburbs - are far higher than in the overall population.
Intriguingly, his solution was for France to take back control of its borders by leaving the EU.
As reform stalls, there is a sense that France is becoming ungovernable. Already massive protests are planned for September 10 by a movement called Bloque Tout (Block Everything).
The very title of this organisation is an indicator of the nihilism and self-interest that now prevails in this divided land.
So economic and civic decline will continue, while immigration will carry on rising, as will the shadow of crime.
Between 2022 and 2023, drug-related murders and attempted murders increased by 38 per cent.
Even joyful moments can turn sour in this embittered culture, as happened this summer when Paris Saint-Germain won the Champions League, the most prestigious European club football tournament; a victory that led to major rioting in the capital including 500 arrests, 190 injuries and two fatalities.
France is a country I love but it seems to be trapped in a doom loop. The last three presidents - Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and Emmanuel Macron - all came to power promising change only to abjectly fail to deliver it.
But the biggest loser in all this is not some here today gone tomorrow politician but France itself.
And the tragedy is that Britain watching the terrifying decline of a once great nation from across the Channel seems to be making exactly the same mistakes.