Nicolas Sarkozy once sought to seduce Valerie Trierweiler, President Francois Hollande's spurned ex-girlfriend, but she turned him down as a "cad'', a new book claims.
Mr Sarkozy is said to have tried to charm Miss Trierweiler, then 42, at a Bastille Day garden party at the Elysee Palace two months after his 2007 election, Patrice Machuret writes in L'Enfant Terrible, Life at the Elysee under Sarkozy.
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Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Photo/AP.
The then president, whose marriage to Cecilia Ciganer, his second wife, was on the verge of breaking up at the time, is said to have "made a pass'' at Miss Trierweiler, a political journalist who for years had been having a secret affair with Mr Hollande, then the Socialist party leader.