Privacy and France's First Lady: A very private matter

What a wonderful story. In his moment of triumph, the president-elect of France is publicly reconciled with his wife before a crowd of 30,000 people. Another 20 million are watching live on television.

After disappearing for long periods during her husband's triumphant campaign - after failing to vote alongside him earlier in the day; after insistent rumours that the couple had split for a second time - Cécilia Sarkozy abruptly appeared with Nicolas before a cheering crowd in the Place de la Concorde late on election night.

Cécilia was casually dressed in a loose grey blouse and white slacks. She looked uncomfortable. She fidgeted with her clothes and looked at her watch. She gave her husband a brief kiss. She fiddled with the collar of his jacket. He did not mention her by name in his short, elegant and modest (for him) speech. All the same, this was Cinderella in reverse. Instead of vanishing, our enigmatic heroine had reappeared with her triumphant prince just before the chimes struck midnight on election day. What a gift for the newspapers. What a wonderful story for the "people press" - or in French la presse pipole. The French papers were, of course, full of the story the next day.

Er, no. Mme Sarkozy's presence was mentioned but there was no discussion of the apparent reconciliation between France's first couple elect. During the campaign, the mainstream press had scarcely mentioned the rift between them. In the acres of coverage of the election in Le Monde the next day, the only reference to Cécilia's startling re-appearance was the following daring sentence in a colour story about the festivities on the Place de la Concorde: "Have you seen, Cécilia is there!" a young girl whispers to her neighbour.

La press pipole has been similarly circumspect this week. Paris Match has a picture of Cécilia kissing Nicolas on the front cover. "Cécilia shares in his victory," a sub-headline says.

And why wouldn't she? The magazine is puzzled why readers might ask. The fearless Paris Match had never mentioned that Cécilia - part of M.Sarkozy's political operation, not just his wife - had vanished from the campaign five weeks ago.

Covering French politics in 2007 can be like covering Soviet politics circa 1974. The simple explanation of all this coyness is that the French privacy law forbids discussion of private lives, even the private lives of public people. This is not a sufficient explanation.

Celebrity magazines like Paris Match break that law whenever it suits them and then pay the modest fines and damages. Even the more aggressive publications - which trample the private lives of minor actors and pop-stars weekly - have ignored the reports about a new rift in the Sarkozy marriage which have circulated on the internet and in the foreign press.

Mme Sarkozy left Nicolas for another man in May 2005, leading to a seven-month separation. Then French magazines followed her every word and movement. Why the omerta this time? Much of the French magazine industry is owned by friends of M. Sarkozy. According to every opinion poll since January, he was a good bet to become President Sarkozy. He is known to have a long memory for journalists who anger him.

So what is going on? Is Cécilia Sarkozy going to be the first lady of France after all? Yes, it appears that she is. Will she be a conventional first lady like Bernadette Chirac, organising the collection of centime coins for charities? "The whole idea bores me to tears," Cécilia said in an interview in March 2005. "I am not politically correct."

How much does the first lady matter in the French political landscape anyway? What can be said - given that French privacy law applies to British newspapers that circulate in France - about the state of the Sarkozy marriage?

Who is Cécilia Sarkozy?

Cécilia Maria Sara Isabel Ciganer-Albeniz was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, just south-west of Paris, on 12 November 1957. Her father was of Russian and Gypsy origin. Her mother was Spanish. She infuriated the French far right during the campaign - while she was still taking part in it - by saying she was "proud" that she did not have one drop of French blood.

Mme Sarkozy has three brothers, one of whom has become an American citizen and is a senior official at Nasa. Her family used to run a fur business on the Place Beauvau, next door to the Elysée Palace, the official residence of French presidents. As a child she suffered from heart problems and retarded growth. She overcame these difficulties to become a studious and beautiful young woman and a talented pianist. She was, successively, a model, a law student and a parliamentary aide before startling her family by marrying a celebrated television personality in 1984.

She was 27. Jacques Martin was 51. He was a kind of French Hughie Greene, a cantankerous, unctuous but much-loved presenter of children's talent shows. The marriage was the first of a number of impulsive changes of direction in Cécilia's life.

Their marriage was performed at the town hall in the super-rich Paris suburban enclave of Neuilly-sur-Seine. The officiating officer was the 29-year-old mayor, an ambitious young centre-right politician called Nicolas Sarkozy.

Three years later, Sarkozy and Cécilia met again at another marriage ceremony. Nicolas, whose own marriage was in difficulties, told friends that he was "struck by lightning". He fell in love with Cécilia at first - or second - sight.

Sarkozy left his wife and two sons. Cécilia - making another impulsive change of direction - left her husband, taking her two daughters, aged two and six months, with her. According to one account, the abandoned TV star later strode into the Neuilly town hall and punched the young mayor on the nose.

Nicolas and Cécilia lived together for nine years before his divorce came through and they married in 1996. By that time, Sarkozy's career had soared and then, briefly, dipped. He split with his mentor Jacques Chirac and supported Edouard Balladur in the 1995 presidential election, which M. Chirac, inconveniently, won.

The Sarkozys brought up Cécilia's two daughters, Judith and Jeanne-Marie, now aged 20 and 24. They also had a son, Louis, who was 10 last month. As Nicolas Sarkozy began his four-year campaign to be president in 2003 Cécilia emerged as the very model of a modern political wife. She had her own office next to his in the Ministry of the Interior. She was part adviser, part unpaid head of his private office. Other, paid, advisers and officials were not too happy.

Two years ago, in the middle of another political campaign (before the referendum on the European Constitution) rumours began to circulate that the Sarkozys had split up. M. Sarkozy later accused the Chirac camp of fomenting the rumours to damage him.

Whoever was responsible, the rumours proved to be true - Cécilia was living in New York with an international communications consultant called Richard Attias. Although this seemed like a bolt from the blue, Mme Sarkozy had been dropping public hints for months that she was not quite the contented power wife that she seemed.

She said that she "did not see herself" as France's first lady. She wanted to preserve her own independence. She wanted to have the right "to wear jeans and sandals" or "combat trousers and cowboy boots".

"I am not who you think I am," she told a TV interviewer. Asked where she expected to be in three years' time, she said: "Jogging in Central Park in New York."

Cécilia Sarkozy returned to her husband in January 2006.

One way of trying to understand what happened during those seven months is to turn to a work of fiction. A romantic-political novel, published in 2006, Entre le Coeur et la Raison [Between heart and reason], tells the story of a power wife, "Celia", who splits with her rapidly rising husband, "Guillaume". The book is written in a cloying, nudge-nudge style, reminiscent of Private Eye's spoof novelist of royal romance, "Sylvie Krin". It was, however, largely based on conversations with Cécilia Sarkozy.

The journalist Valérie Domain, tried to published an investigative and factual book. M. Sarkozy intervened. Mme Domain therefore published a novelised version of her manuscript. Officially, everything in Entre le Coeur et la Raison is pure fiction.

The novel suggests that the rising politician's enemies in his own camp got wind of Celia's new romantic attachment. They egged her on by presenting her with a detailed dossier of her husband's extra-marital affairs. The novel presents Celia as a kind of romantic heroine for modern times, torn between her demand for absolute passion and sincerity in her relationships and her ambition to be the first lady of France.

"You no longer even see me," she says to her husband at one point. "I have the impression that you have become like all of these other politicians, cold and distant, even with your wife. You are a fake and I can stand it no longer."

Celia is put under intense moral pressure to return to her husband or lose the right to see her young daughter. Celia reluctantly returns, but observes: "When you break a vase, even if you try to stick it together, the cracks will always remain."

A non-fictional account of what happened in 2005 was given in a press interview by a friend of the Sarkozys, Patrick Balkany, mayor of Levallois-Perret, the town next door to Neuilly. M. Sarkozy was reportedly furious that his friend had spoken to the press. "What happened to Cécilia is what more often happens to a man," M. Balkany told Le Parisien in January 2006. "She found herself in love with someone else - at a time when it was very difficult for Nicolas, when he was pre-occupied by his work - confused, less close to her, irritable, submerged in his job."

Three weeks ago, rumours began to circulate on the French language internet that Mme Sarkozy had again split with her husband. A source in M. Sarkozy's UMP party told The Independent two weeks ago that it was "generally known in the party" that there was another rift in the marriage. Mme Sarkozy re-appeared at the Place de la Concorde last Sunday night. She then spent a three-day holiday with her husband aboard a billionaire's yacht off Malta.

Everything suggests that Mme Sarkozy will - whether she will wear jeans and sandals or not - become France's first lady from next Wednesday.

Does any of this matter? Yes. The state of the president-elect's marriage is not just a question of tittle-tattle. The première dame may not be as formal a part of the French political landscape as the American first lady but she has come to play a substantial role in the life of the country. Millions of people in provincial France would have been surprised - to say the least - if President Sarkozy had turned up at the Elysée Palace without a wife.

There is something else.

In the seven-month period that Mme Sarkozy left her husband, his state of mind then was reportedly described by friends, including the former prime minister, M. Balladur, as "fragile". It was then that he used some of the extreme language which has haunted him ever since. He described multi-racial suburban youth gangs as "scum". He said they should be cleaned out with a high-powered hose.

While Mme Sarkozy was missing from the presidential campaign, M. Sarkozy's language also seemed to become more extreme, more populist and more ranting. These may be coincidences. But maybe the prince needs Cinderella more than Cinderella needs the prince.