The person the President actually pays to speak for him, David Martinon, apparently is the only one not commenting on the prospect of a wedding.

The President’s critics, many of whom don’t like his Centre-Right politics, are already fed up with his giddy new love and the way they say he’s used it to distract from a further slide in the economy, which has left voters feeling they have less buying power than at any time since the early 1990s.

It’s not the first time, they charge, he’s used his personal life to divert attention from more pressing issues of state. He ended his 11-year marriage on October 15, just as he was about to take on powerful unions that were threatening a prolonged strike over his effort to reform the state pension system. The unions ended up backing down temporarily; his wife, also a former model, went off to London; and the President’s approval rating remained high.

A few weeks later he met Bruni at a dinner party at Versailles and the oh-so-public courting began. Now, for the first time since Sarkozy became President last year, his approval rating has dipped to around 50 per cent. Christine Clerc, a political analyst, said that while the French don’t traditionally care about their Presidents’ personal lives many people aren’t comfortable with having so much high-living thrown in their faces.

Bruni has had a successful modelling career with more than 250 magazine covers. By the time she quit, she was earning $7.5 million a year. She also made a success, selling almost 2 million copies, of her first album Quelqu’un m’a Dit (Someone Told Me). What is unclear is if such an independent woman could carry out the selfless duties of a first lady and withstand the public pressures. “When people want to criticise the king, they often begin by criticising the queen. This has not changed since Marie Antoinette,” says Clerc.