PARIS -- In his new, rejuvenated, Lion-In-Winter existence, he's married again -- to the former Mademoiselle Graf. He has a new baby, a new coach and some self-professed new motivation. But barely before the second week began on an alternately hot and wet Monday, the same old Andre Agassi was nearly swept out of another French Open. By another French player. On another day of dramatically weird and wild circumstances that threatened to deny the American icon just about the time he seemed comfortably positioned for another strong run at the title.

	Andre Agassi proved once again that he's not too old to keep playing.

Last year, Agassi won the first set here and then was comprehensively beaten in the quarterfinals by Sebastien Grosjean, whom not many people knew outside France. On Monday he nearly didn't even get that far, being absolutely thrashed over the first two sets in the fourth round, 6-4, 6-3, by Paul-Henri Mathieu, a 20-year-old wild card whom not many people knew outside or inside the country.

Well, Diane Lane might have known him.

But, no, Mathieu wasn't selling rare books or offering café au laits or seducing anybody in any movie lofts. It was real life, and the tall, pug-nosed Parisian was methodically unloading a serve that Agassi couldn't solve, boldly out-hitting his opponent in most of the exchanges and keeping the veteran '99 French champion off balance and frustrated until an hour and a half into the match.

It apparently took all that time, plus a fortuitous rain delay and a fraudulent call on the sideline early in the third set, to get Agassi thoroughly cognizant of what was happening to him or stirred up enough to change things -- hey, Jaden Gil, 7 months old the day before the tournament opened, has to eat! At that point Agassi merely began working the new matinee idol over, bossing the points (an inexorable ton of them drop shot winners) and taking control of the occasion.

"If I'm hitting a lot of drops, you can be sure there's not a great feeling out there. A lot has to go awry for me to feel that's something to try to throw into the equation," Agassi said.

The recently crowned champion of Rome, Agassi had waddled onto Court Philippe Chatrier with that distinctive duck saunter, having won 18 of his previous 19 matches. But he had won only four of 11 of his most recent outings against Frenchmen, losing to everyone from the sublime to the ridiculous, specifically one Nicolas Thomann in the first round at Atlanta last year. Then there was Grosjean at last year's French debacle whom political psychologists will recall Agassi folded against -- just as soon as Bill Clinton entered the celebrity boxes and stole his thunder. Well, Chelsea Clinton showed up at Roland Garros on Saturday, but she was a couple of days too early to help Mathieu.

During the 20-minute rain delay at the end of the second set with everything awry, Andre rushed to meet with his new mentor, Darren Cahill -- who replaced Brad Gilbert in the Agassi posse after he was fired by Lleyton Hewitt whom Cahill had coached to No. 1. They talked about Agassi's lack of aggression on his returns and "getting more into the points."

"Unless you're getting depth, you can't control the (games)," Andre said later. "I felt like (Mathieu) was just hitting the ball better than I was. I needed to start really moving my feet and executing my shots."

Which Agassi did shortly after Mathieu stretched his lead from 2-0 in sets to another 2-0 in games in the third, then twice moved dangerously (one point away) from a 4-1 lead. Double A had just been robbed blind of a forehand winner and had swatted a one-bounce overhead (that you or I or Diane Lane or any other hacker could have at least kept inside the lines) practically to the Arc de Triomphe. But Mathieu finally showed some vulnerable nerves of his own that translated into key errors.

When the former French junior champion's first delivery started failing him, Agassi jumped all over his seconds -- taking advantage to convert his fifth break point for 2-all in the set. That came within a dominating stretch that Agassi used to win 11 of the next 12 games and eventually sets three and four by twin 6-3 scores.

	“	That's the great thing about tennis. You can't run out the clock. You've got to find a way to finish. ”
		— Andre Agassi

Back in the French Open championship match of 1999, which had also been delayed by rain, Agassi had managed to come back from two sets down as surprise finalist Andrei Medvedev choked like the Ukranian hound most of his career proved him to be.

And surely in the fifth set on Monday, Mathieu would turn up as dead as that Gallic lothario whom Lane fell for in Unfaithful. But no. The kid drew first blood in the final frame when Agassi double faulted twice. After holding serve, Matheiu suddenly led 3-1 and he was not only staring down daggers at the American but also the kid was pounding his heart like he was Jason Kidd or somebody and showing the spectacular attitude that has marked him as something of a full-of-himself wastrel from his junior days.

Mathieu spent parts of three years training at Nick Bollettieri's spawning grounds in Florida where the reigning legend is, of course, Agassi. "I thought I could win in the fifth," he said. "But, you know, it wasn't just anybody across the net. It was Agassi."

And it was Agassi who, with those two break points against him in the fifth game of the final set, kept cracking courageous second serves onto the lines to save himself. It was Agassi who cheekily fluttered another of his disguised drops, off the letcord yet, to help him seize the sixth game. And it was Agassi, the oldest man left in the tournament -- at one point the ancient Las Vegas mariner actually sprinted to the changeover, as Mathieu had done earlier; whatever you young bucks can do, this bowlegged old baldie can do better -- who strung together five winning games to close it out as Mathieu ultimately appeared as tight as he was tired.

"That's the great thing about tennis," said the Lion in, uh, summer. "You can't run out the clock. You've got to find a way to finish."

Next up in the quarters is "The Little Mosquito," Spain's Juan Carlos Ferrero -- champion of Monte Carlo and a losing semifinalist here the past two years to the eventual champion, Guga Kuerten -- whom Agassi has never played. But 'Skito, beware. As the 32-year-old seven-time Grand Slam champ edges somewhere near the precipice of his remarkable career -- Agassi apparently wants to keep playing until little Jaden Gil is old enough to observe daddy as a world class athlete -- the man keeps finding terrific ways to finish.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.