Nicolas Sarkozy has entered prison. Moments before 9:15, the former French president appeared at the door of his residence at Villa Montmorency in Paris to get into a car escorted by a long dozen of police on motorcycles and head to La Santé. By his side, his wife Carla Bruni.
She has been the most staunch defender of Nicolas Sarkozy, with that protective lioness look and those swipes thrown at the media, like when she decided to throw down the foam protector of the microphone of Mediapart, the outlet that uncovered the Libyan connection and which she holds responsible for the unprecedented five-year sentence of the former French president, leading him to enter prison at 70 years old.
"Can I play you a song, my love?", whispered Carla Bruni to "her man" Carla Bruni (57), far from the turmoil, in the intimacy of the family apartment and in a video recorded shortly after learning the verdict. "Avec plaisir (with pleasure)," he responded. And the former model and singer improvised on the guitar Let it be, as a sweet comfort for these turbulent times.
No one would have said that their love story, born as a late coup de foudre in 2007 and sealed a year later with a wedding inside the Elysée Palace, would end up taking this unpredictable turn. Few predicted back then that the relationship between the odd couple would bear fruit (their daughter Giulia) and would survive against all odds the electoral defeat and the storm of legal battles in recent years.
Before meeting Sarkozy, Carla Bruni distanced herself by saying that "monogamy is boring." In her extensive love life as a model and singer, she went through the arms of Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Vincent Pérez, and Charles Berling among others (she has had to deny several times that Donald Trump was on her long list).
She ended up marrying in 2000 Raphaël Enthoven, a philosophy professor, essayist, and radio and television presenter. The song "Raphaël" from the album Quelqu'un m'a dit, the biggest success of her singing career, is dedicated to him, which sold two million copies. They divorced after seven years.
In November 2007, Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy coincided at a party organized by a mutual friend, the public relations Jacques Séquéla. To lighten the mood, the host proposed a game among his guests: four minutes to try to seduce another. The singer and the president, who had just ended his second marriage, hit it off immediately. The spark was mutual.
"That night I wanted to show him that I was a poet," Carla Bruni revealed years later in an interview with The Guardian. "I'm not Yeats, but I try to write poetry (...) I gave him the lyrics of a song written on a sheet. And he kept it. He still has it."
Carla Bruni confessed how everything she thought she knew about her relationships with men went out the window when she met Nicolas Sarkozy: "He is a bit old-fashioned in his relationship with women. He would never let us pay and would always give up his seat if he saw us. He reminded me a bit of my father, maybe there's something Freudian in all this. The fact is that I like gallant men."
Physical appearance, intellect, and sense of humor were in her opinion the perfect combination. He would seize any opportunity in the exercise of power to be with her. She continued with her career (in 2007 she released her album No promises) and quietly planned their wedding, without dwelling too much on becoming the president's wife ("I've been famous since I was 16"). In 2008, she visited the UK as the first lady, curtsied to the queen, and did not have to resist the advances of Prince Philip: "No one flirted with me on that trip, except for my man."
"My man" is how she usually refers to Sarkozy, who appears on her phone screen as Nicolas Amour. Their pregnancy, somewhat unexpected, and the birth of Giulia in 2011 only strengthened a seemingly unbreakable relationship. Subtly, Carla interferes in the presidential battle with a song that seems dedicated to François Hollande (Le Pingouin) despite her denial, but that sums up her political preferences ("I've never been too militant").
And when it's time to leave the Elysée, she does so without fanfare, ready to enjoy thedolce vita in the family apartment in the 16th district or on the French Riviera, to have more time for her daughter and "her man," and to reconnect with the guitar with the album Little french songs, where she celebrates the beauty and simplicity of French chanson (with that peculiar touch of being born in Turin and having put down roots in her adopted country at the age of eight).