Cécilia Sarkozy: The First Lady vanishes

Like the Devil, she wears Prada, like Marie-Antoinette, she fascinates and antagonises people in equal measure. History will decide who she has most in common with. The pictures taken at the G8 Summit earlier this month said it all. At her first appearance on the international scene wearing the shoes of France's First Lady, she sent out a crystal-clear statement of intent. She would do things her way. President Nicolas Sarkozy, her husband, would have to put up with it. Or else, she might leave again. Like she did, two years ago, when she eloped to New York for eight months. At the G8, she dazzled photographers with her toned body in an Azzedine Alaia black-laced, strappy dress. Nicolas was very attentive, as always, holding her hand, while she stood, aloof, with a steely smile and fiery eyes.

She was at the summit one minute and gone the next, leaving her husband as the only unaccompanied head of state at the gala dinner given by the Merkels. But even in her absence, she outshone those present. When, on 11 June, still at the G8, Nicolas Sarkozy was seen staggering and, apparently, burping, at a press conference after "a longer than usual lunch with Vladimir Putin", we knew that, had she been there, he wouldn't perhaps have had a shot of vodka too many. She had warned us all two years ago when she famously said: "Being the First Lady, honestly, is a bore. I'm not politically correct, I don't fit the mould."

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She may resent it, she may claim she won't even try to fit in, yet she has managed every aspect of the president's life ever since they moved in together, 18 years ago. "She went wherever he went, advised and listened to him, and supervised his diet and his appointments," says Vanessa Schneider, one of the few journalists who has ever interviewed her, back in 2004. When Nicolas Sarkozy became number two in the Chirac government in 2002, as interior minister, he gave Cécilia an office next to his. She kept his diary and advised him. She had a title but no salary. She was everything and nothing - a contradiction she has always struggled with.

Everybody who met her back then talks about how cold and exacting she could be. In front of camera, though, she knows how to be more suave. Recently, caught out in the street walking to her car, she was asked by one journalist about her relationship with Marc Lévy, a French writer living in London. Rumours of a romance between them had spread. For once, all smiles, she replied: "Oh, I had lunch with him the other day. I met his girlfriend, charming really." Nicolas could do without such rumours, but he's got Cécilia under his skin, as he once admitted to his mother. He has warned everybody that she is "the only non-negotiable part" of his career.

Since becoming president, Nicolas has claimed the family will move into his official residence, the Elysée Palace, but they haven't started packing up their flat in Neuilly yet.

"Moving a big family takes time," he has tried to explain. In fact, Cécilia is said to be unenthusiastic about the move. Although she is reportedly keen on updating the Palace's décor. Living on rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré (the Elysée is at number 55) would have one advantage, though - the shops: she'd be able to pop into Vuitton, Fendi, Pucci, Céeline, Givenchy and Marc Jacobs, all brands owned by Bernard Arnault and his LVMH group. Bernard Arnault was the Sarkozys' best man at their wedding in 1996.

Of course, she may in the end simply refuse to move the family to the palace at all. She would much rather relocate to the Sarkozys' weekend retreat, La Lanterne, an 18th century hunting lodge beside Versailles Palace, complete with pool and tennis court. She has already begun a programme of redecoration there, too.

But it's not just in matters of interior design that Cécilia's personality is stamped all over the presidency. On 16 May, at the ceremony during which Nicolas Sarkozy was officially sworn in, she drew up the guest list, leaving out a number of important figures; she asked the Republican Guard band to play "Asturias", a piece of music composed by her greatgrandfather, the Spanish composer Albeniz; she chose to wear an Italian brand, a satin Prada dress, showing her bare arms, in clear breach of protocol.

Her every move is as scrutinised; her every absence commented on. Ten days earlier, on 6 May, the night of the second round of the elections, the night her husband and father of her third child was elected president, she was nowhere to be seen. Nicolas was alone when he addressed the nation, alone in the car which drove him to the Champs Elysées, where he was only flanked by his sons and her daughters, but no Cécilia. When he stopped at a brasserie on the most famous avenue in the world to have dinner with his closest friends and colleagues, she didn't show up. Yet again, she had carefully chosen the guests she wasn't going to entertain. When she eventually, oh-so-briefly, appeared, just before midnight, at Place de la Concorde where a concert was performed to celebrate his victory, pictures showed her standing behind him, unsmiling. Sulking, actually.

So who is this woman who organises every detail of her husband's life, yet disappears before the guests arrive?

When you ask the question to political commentators, high-ranking civil servants, ex-collaborators, few are ready to talk openly. "It's a very delicate subject," says a political commentator from a daily newspaper, "because it's easy to argue, at least in France, that everything about the wife of a politician belongs to the private sphere. It's certainly what the courts would say here. Besides, we're not talking about any politician but the President, whose close friends include almost every media and industry tycoon in France, therefore quite probably my boss and yours. That's why some French journalists, even the hard-nosed ones, prefer to think of their career than to seem impertinent."

Indeed, Nicolas' close friends include Martin Bouygues, head of TF1, the first French TV channel, and LCI, the first 24-hour news channel. Martin is the godfather of Nicolas and Cécilia's son, Louis. Then there is Arnaud Lagardère, owner the Hachette publishing group, with a portfolio of important titles such as Paris-Match, Elle and Le Journal du Dimanche; and also stakes in international publishing houses, like Orion in Britain. There is also Serge Dassault, heir to an aeronautic empire and owner of Le Figaro. And Bernard Arnault, the aforementioned head of the luxury group LVMH, who has just announced his intention to buy Les Echos, the French equivalent of the Financial Times, from the Pearson group. The list of the President's powerful friends is long, so long that most French journalists, authors and commentators have worked at some point in their career for those men.

"It's even worse than that," says one political commentator who wants to remain anonymous, "if you thought the publicly owned media, such as France Television and Radio France, were safe havens from political meddling, think again. There are well-known Sarkozysts in place there too, like Arlette Chabot, the news editor of France 2. At least the trade unions are more powerful there."

The political and media commentator Daniel Schneidermann is one of the very few to ask publicly why news about Cécilia Sarkozy shouldn't be considered of public interest: "[The uncommented-on rumour during the elections that Cécilia had left home again] shows a Pravda-isation of the French media," he says. "When a wife or a husband leaves home, it is a serious act. One which informs the public about a politician's psychology. Any Ameri can journalist would have found it natural to ask Nicolas Sarkozy about it." But no French journalist did.

"A very good point," comments one French diplomat. " Especially if one considers that, in an unprecedented move, Cécilia Sarkozy has been given a diplomatic adviser at the Elysée, Nicolas de la Grandville. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. His work will include more gossip than diplomacy." If nobody wants to speak up, well, let's delve into the past to understand the present.

Cécilia Sarkozy, née Cécilia Maria Sara Isabel Ciganer-Albeniz, once boasted that she did not have "a single drop of French blood" in her veins. But was that really an awkward declaration of love for France, where one in four people have a foreign grand-parent? Was she trying to reinterpret Thomas Jefferson's famous line: "Every man has two countries, his own and France"? Her family history, and that of her husband, certainly highlight the country's tradition as a place of refuge par excellence.

Her father, André Ciganer, was a White Russian émigré of Jewish origin. Born in Romania in 1898, he left home at the age of 13, just before the First World War. For 20 years, the young man whose papers declared him a " stateless citizen" gallivanted through Europe, doing odd jobs and leaving behind him a trail of heart-broken young women. A little like Nicolas Sarkozy's father, a Jewish Hungarian known for his love for le beau sexe - in other words, another skirt-chaser.

In 1937, though, André Ciganer, stopped in his tracks on the Basque coast. His path had just crossed that of a young beauty with, the legend goes, a striking resemblance to Ava Gardner. Her name, Teresita Albeniz, daughter of a Spanish ambassador and grand-daughter of the famous composer Isaac Albeniz. Fifteen days of whirlwind romance and André, 39, asked Teresita, 18, to marry him. "They fell in love madly, perhaps because they both felt lost in life," said Cécilia, their fourth child and only daughter, in one of her rare interviews.

In the 1940s, André and Diane (Teresita changed her name after they moved to Paris) settled down in the French capital where he took a job as a furrier in a shop on Place Beauvau in the 8th district. Coincidentally, the square was also home to the government building, where, 60 years later, Nicolas, the son-in-law he would never meet, worked from 2005-2007 as Minister of the Interior.

André and Diane went on to have four children, three boys and a little girl. "Our childhood was calm and rather spoiled. We never moved and were brought up in the Catholic faith," Cécilia confided in an interview with Libération in 2004. There was no need to move and seek excitement elsewhere when at dinner, friends and family spoke five different languages. To further prove the cosmopolitan nature of the family, two of Cécilia's elder brothers have since taken on American and Peruvian citizenship respectively.

Cécilia hasn't got a drop of French blood in her veins, yet she often appears more French than the French: more vindictive, rebellious, independent and even freer from conventions. Just like her second husband, Nicolas Sarkozy - half Hungarian on his father's side, a quarter Turkish-Jewish and a quarter French on his mother's - a man who, famously, called for people to "love France or leave it."

As ardent patriots, Cécilia and Nicolas are perfect examples of the Republican model of integration and social mobility. This prompted many French intellectuals from the Left to embrace his presidential candidacy. Historian Max Gallo and philosopher Alain Finkielkraut for instance, saw in him, and her, not simply a couple from the other political side, but an incarnation of a country at ease with its diversity, yet adamant about its Republican principles.

Educated in a Catholic school in the plush 16th district of Paris, Cécilia studied the piano like all respectable jeunes filles ¿ marier. After her baccalaureate, she began studying law at the posh Assas university on the Left Bank, but her eyes were clearly set on a brighter and more glamorous future. She soon quit, and started modelling, not on the catwalks but for the rich clients of the haute couture houses, such as Schiaparelli. The 5ft 9in young woman with Egyptian eyes then tried her hand at public relations before working as a researcher to an MP, an acquaintance of her eldest brother. Power got closer, Paris felt smaller, more familiar.

It was at this point that she caught the eye of Jacques Martin, the Bruce Forsyth of French TV, 24 years her senior, and known for his rubicund complexion and oleaginous sense of humour. Was it his Frenchness she fell in love with? Or was it the allure of affluence and celebrity? Either way, she soon fell pregnant and, 10 days before giving birth to her first daughter at the age of 26, they were married. It was his third marriage; he already had four children (he now has eight from four marriages).

Cécilia's catch was hardly in his prime but she didn't care: she had made it into the world of TV celebrities and showbiz-friendly politicians. The civil wedding took place at the town hall of Neuilly, a nouveau riche, western suburb of Paris, in August 1984. As is required by law, mayors or their deputies oversee marriages. Neuilly's mayor, the youngest in France, married Cécilia to Jacques the lad. His name, Nicolas Sarkozy. He was only 29. "What was I doing, marrying her to another man!" the future president later exclaimed. "I fell in love with her almost immediately. I thought, I must have that woman. She's mine." He himself was married to a Corsican who wasn't going to let him go so easily.

The Sarkozys and Martins became friends, even going on ski trips together. There is a famous story, related by biographer Catherine Nay: one day the then Madame Sarkozy retraced her husband's footsteps in the snow. They stopped at Cécilia's window. Five years later, Cécilia left her husband. "I left with my two little darlings (aged 4 years and 6 months) under each arm," she later recalled. And fell straight into Nicolas's.

Jacques magnanimously agreed to a swift divorce but the first Mrs Sarkozy was less accommodating; she fought hard for five years before capitulating.

During those years, Cécilia has confided, "life was hell. Everybody in Neuilly was pointing the finger at us. I was looked down on."

Indeed, people commonly referred to her as "the mayor's whore". At last, in 1989, Cécilia and Nicolas married, un couple respectable, at last.

Nicolas and Cécilia had many things in common. First, they had been brought up in the same part of Paris. He, in the 16th and 17th districts and then Neuilly, beyond the Bois de Boulogne. She, born in Boulogne-Billancourt, the suburb next door, studied in the 16th near the Champs Elysées. In the 1980s, a trio of comedians, Les Inconnus, released a famous song, " Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy", mocking those rich brats who complain endlessly that their existence is "not a piece of cake" and want to revolt. "Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy, c'est pas du gâteau, Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy, tel est notre ghetto" went the rap-style refrain. The song became a national hit and made Les Inconnus stars for life. Twenty years later, everybody in France still knows the lyrics by heart.

Neuilly and the western districts of Paris are still the heartlands of the Parisian nouveaux riches, a far cry from the 6th and 7th districts on the Left Bank where the old money is to be found, and the discreet charm of the haute bourgeoisie is most in evidence.

But Cécilia and Nicolas never seem much troubled by class. Their style is all about action and passion, business and talent. What they've got, they worked hard at getting - or so they say. Why shouldn't one flaunt what's been obtained through hard labour? In their world, you are what you do and you look the part. No French journalist ever dared ask Nicolas Sarkozy why he so ostentatiously shows off his Rolex. He would probably reply: " What's the problem with my Rolex? I worked hard to have one. Work harder and you too could buy one." In his world, it seems, everybody wants to have a Rolex.

As for Cécilia, she famously said that she felt more comfortable in designer "combat trousers and cowboy boots" than in couture gowns - hardly the traditional image of la Parisienne. Of course, she still appears to the foreign press as being very chic, simply because she knows not to overdo colours, jewels, accessories and make-up. However, simple chic doesn't come naturally to her; what she has really got is pizzazz or chutzpah. She's sexy more than elegant. Just like him. No wonder they both love the American way.

"In 10 years time, I see myself jogging in Central Park," she told a journalist from The New York Times. And perhaps, she will leave France when she grows tired of it.

Ah, New York, the city where she canoodled with Richard Attias, the Moroccan-born publicist with whom she eloped in May 2005, leaving Nicolas to cope alone at Place Beauvau.

When, in a country with the strictest privacy laws, Paris-Match showed Cécilia and Richard seemingly flat-hunting in New York on its cover in August 2005, Arnaud Lagardère, owner of Paris-Match, apologised to his close friend Nicolas Sarkozy. But the future president, incensed with rage, asked for more than just excuses. A year later, Alain Génestar, Paris-Match's editor, was sacked.

When Valérie Domain's authorised autobiography of Cécilia was about to be released in November 2005, the publisher was summoned to the Interior Ministry. "When he came out of Nicolas Sarkozy's office, he just informed me that the release was off and the 25,000 copies of the book would be pulped," recalls Domain, a journalist for the celebrity magazine Gala.

Six months later, Domain finally published a novel called Between Passion and Reason, telling the story of Célia Michaut-Cordier, a character who's life bore a striking resemblance to the First Lady's. The book was very little publicised by the French media.

"She keeps the media at bay so that they stop interpreting her every move," comments Carole Barjon from Le Nouvel Observateur. "One day she appears on the cover of a magazine, the next, she disappears. But only if she chooses. They say she is an opportunist but her choices in her private life a couple of years ago show a woman with character and the ability to wrong-foot her detractors. She has shown her ambivalence to being pigeonholed: she's non-conformist, ruthless, even with those whom she cares for, and sensitive to criticism. What she wants is to exist outside her husband."

To exist outside her husband? A difficult task when one has forged a career being the "wife of". Does she dream of going back to university? Surely not when she has shown such a taste for the easy life. Perhaps she dreams of life away from the limelight, alone, somewhere with Nicolas. But she knows he has so little time to spend with her. So she vents her frustration in theatrical ways. Such as on 6 May, the day of his election. Cécilia didn't bother to vote, even by proxy. She didn't cast her ballot for her husband. A journalist went to check the registers which are available to the public and wrote an article about it for Le Journal du Dimanche. It never appeared. The news filtered out, though; it was finally published and made public. But the French don't seem to care. They seem to like the rebel in her. For the time being.