KEY POINTS:
PARIS - Last month, when Nicolas Sarkozy, officially President of France for less than 20 minutes, turned from the podium where he had just delivered his inaugural address to a select audience in the astonishing Salle de Fetes of the Elysee Palace, he took a few steps to his right and stopped before his wife, Cecilia.
He kissed her slightly awkwardly - she is 12.5cm taller even in flat shoes - and thumbed away what would have been a tear from beneath her eye had she been in the least bit emotional.
The briefest smile slid over her features and then the blank, if beautiful, mask was back in place.
Earlier, with her husband yet to arrive for the ceremony, Cecilia, stunning in an ivory silk Prada dress, had dutifully stood for a few moments with her children before it became absolutely clear to all present that standing next to an empty space waiting for Monsieur le President was not really her style. Hand in hand with her son, Louis, she set off among the invitees, kissing some, waving at others, before stepping rapidly back in line when her husband of 11 years arrived.
Today, France is plunged into yet more elections, this time for the National Assembly. They are likely to turn the French Parliament a strong shade of right-wing, Sarkozyist blue, thus making the introduction of the energetic new President's package of faintly Thatcherite reforms much easier. However, despite the continuing political heat, for many the main event is still Cecilia.
The Nouvel Observateur, the left-leaning weekly magazine, began a special report on the new incumbent of the Elysee Palace last week with a long article about his 49-year-old wife. Cecilia is, the author gushed, "Jackie Kennedy a la Francaise". The article minutely decrypted all the various departures from protocol that have marked the passage to power of the former Schiaparelli and Vogue model, concert pianist and public-relations consultant. Most obvious was the Italian dress for the investiture. No nationalistic, traditional flag-waving for French couture there.
The musical accompaniment for the transmission of power from outgoing Jacques Chirac was the work of a relatively unknown Spanish composer, Isaac Albeniz, Cecilia's great- grandfather. It was Cecilia, too, who drew up the list of those invited to the inauguration ceremony, brutally distancing anyone, whatever their loyalty during the 30 long years that her husband has sought power, who now served no further purpose.
Last week came another sign of individuality from the woman who once pledged never to be "the President's consort", saying: "I don't see myself as first lady. It bores me. I don't fit the mould." So though she accompanied her husband to his first major summit, of the G8 industrialised nations in Germany, and posed dutifully for the various formal photographs, by the end of the week Cecilia Maria Sara Isabel Sarkozy nee Ciganer, France's new first lady, was gone. A daughter's birthday, an early departure scheduled long in advance, explained a spokesman for the French delegation, somewhat lamely.
Cecilia Ciganer was born to an exiled White Russian adventurer turned wealthy fur merchant and a Spanish diplomat's beautiful daughter in the wealthy, predominantly Catholic, western suburbs of Paris. Despite weak health as a child, she grew into a stunning and spoilt teenager, attended a Catholic private school, half-heartedly studied law, got engaged to a photographer and then ended the relationship three weeks before the wedding.
Six months later, she announced that she was going to marry "the most famous man in France". The claim was a slight exaggeration, but her husband to be, a children's TV presenter 20 years her senior called Jacques Martin, was certainly well-known. They were married at the town hall of the wealthy Parisian suburb of Neuilly by the mayor, a young and ambitious politician called Nicolas Sarkozy. "I knew that day that she was the woman for me," he later said.
There was much to draw the two together. Sarkozy comes from a Jewish-Hungarian background, his father was also exiled and he, too, was educated privately.
He, too, is an outsider who has spent much of his life with his nose pressed against the shop window of France's political and social elite. The Sarkozys had two young boys, Cecilia and her husband had two young girls. The couples saw a lot of each other. Much more of each other, in fact, than either Mr Martin or Mrs Sarkozy suspected. On a joint ski trip, the latter is said to have discovered her husband's footprints in the snow outside the window of Cecilia's room.
She is described by friends as "impetuous and romanesque". Certainly, when the crisis came, she does not appear to have hesitated. "When it wasn't working, I took my little chicks under my arms and left," she has told friends. Her divorce came through in four months, but it was seven more years before her new lover was able to marry her. "For love, Cecilia is capable of throwing everything away," one friend said. "She finds a form of stability in passion, a way of existing."
Another passion is politics. Early in her 20s, Cecilia was a parliamentary researcher. In Sarkozy, she found her big adventure. "She was born to push a man," says the friend. And the early years for Sarkozy were not easy.
Energetic but inexperienced, he was easily jostled by seasoned politicians such as Edouard Balladur and the greatest political killer of them all, Jacques Chirac.
After becoming a protege of the latter, Sarkozy betrayed his mentor and found himself in a political desert for years before finally mounting an astonishing comeback which eventually saw him steal the leadership of France's biggest right-wing party from under the then President's nose. By 2002, Sarkozy was back in government - and Cecilia was with him.
In those early days, the couple were a phenomenon. Cecilia accompanied her husband on all his ministerial trips. In photographs, always unsmiling, she stands a little way away from the young, bustling politician. She had an office next to his in the ministries, watched his agenda, his friends, his courtiers, even his diet. Sarkozy likes chocolate and occasional cigars. Cecilia likes neither, though, at the time, she smoked. She gave interviews in her own right. Accused of neglecting her family, she spoke of how she called her children up to three times a day. Accused of being "tough", she described herself as "timid".
And then after years of visibility, she suddenly disappeared from public view. As her husband worked his way into pole position for the presidency, their relationship ran into serious difficulties. Cecilia was sick, she reportedly told friends, of "being part of the furniture". For a long time, the press were guarded, respecting France's fierce privacy laws, but the news leaked out - the front page of Paris Match had a picture of an amorous Cecilia with Richard Attias, a suave, wealthy, Moroccan-born businessman, flat-hunting in New York.
In one interview in 2004, a year before the affair, she said she liked charismatic men who were not typical or classically attractive. Sarkozy, furious and deeply wounded, did everything an ambitious, politician husband does in the circumstances: he bombarded his wife with text messages and calls, ostentatiously took a younger lover and tried to work out where he had gone wrong.
The separation lasted only six months before Cecilia slipped back into Sarkozy's life - and into the Place Beauvau, the French Interior Ministry. The news emerged through the provision of an additional luxury car and driver in the minister's entourage.
Yet she hasn't exactly played the devoted politician's spouse since and a feature of Sarkozy's presidential campaign was the endless speculation about the state of his marriage.
Her presence during the campaign could be described as patchy at best. Her absence at key rallies was obvious to all observers. Though she is said to have selected her husband's campaign headquarters, she was so rarely there that she was known as "the ghost".
Nor did she even vote in the crucial second round of the election in May.
The monarchical aspects of the French political system always strike observers. The powers of the President are far in excess of many Prime Ministers. And the consorts of the French kings and emperors have always attracted attention, too, particularly when they decide to "meddle".
The most famous example is perhaps Madame de Pompadour, as sophisticated and accomplished a political strategist as her lover, Louis XV. She provoked jealousy, hatred, fear and plenty of scurrilous gossip.
Cecilia has already acquired a high-powered diplomatic adviser and a press attache to allow her to play a "complementary" role to her husband, focusing on so-called "feminine" questions such as "children, women and humanitarian affairs, the French language and culture".
The gossip, fear, jealousy and hatred are inevitable.
Cecilia Sarkozy is certain to tread her own path through the corridors of power. And it is likely to be a lonely one.
Cecilia Sarkozy
* Born: November 12, 1957, in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine.
* Career: Studied piano and then law. Modelled for French fashion houses including Schiaparelli. Parliamentary attache to Senator Rene Touzet.
* Married: TV host Jacques Martin. Which is when she first met then-mayor Nicolas Sarkozy, who presided over the marriage ceremony. Left Martin for Sarkozy in 1988. They married in 1996. Has two daughters, Judith and Jeanne-Marie, with Martin. The Sarkozys have a son, Louis.
* Best of times: Now? According to a report in the New York Times, Nicolas Sarkozy " ... and Cecilia, his wife, have worked long and hard to portray themselves as the ultimate power couple of France".
* Worst of times: Now? "I don't see myself as first lady," she has said. "The whole idea bores me." Largely absent from her husband's presidential campaign, she has said that she sees herself living in the US and "jogging in Central Park in 10 years' time. I prefer going round in combat trousers and cowboy boots."
* What she says: "I do not have a single drop of French blood in my veins."
* What others say: "Love makes her say, 'To hell with everything.' She finds in her passion, stability and a reason for living", an anonymous friend.
- OBSERVER
