France’s rumour de jour is that Nicolas Sarkozy, the nation’s President and first bachelor, has done just what he said he would do if he decided to marry his former-supermodel girlfriend, Carla Bruni: He would keep it a secret.

“There are strong chances you will learn of it once it’s done,” Sarkozy told 600 reporters at a news conference a week ago after acknowledging that he had gotten “serious” with his girlfriend of two months.

Now, a regional newspaper, L’est Republican, is reporting that the couple got married in a “small, private ceremony” at the Elysee Palace on Thursday. The President’s staff had no comment, and the report, based on a source close to “a witness who attended the ceremony,” contained no details.

“The details — they’re part of the President’s private life,” said L’est Republican reporter Laid Sammari, adding, “I’m not interested in whether she wore a white dress and pink panties. That’s private. What’s not private is to know if the President is married. Will he have a First Lady with him when he goes to India at the end of the month.”

Sammari’s report had heft if only because he was the first to break the news in October of Sarkozy’s divorce from his second wife, Cecilia, and was first to interview her afterward.

But the notion that any part of the life of the man who has been dubbed “le President bling-bling” is private seems increasingly comical as the media and public pore over details of the divorce, over opinions by world leaders on his new relationship, and, oh, yes, over a contretemps with his top executive over how they’re running the country.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon on Tuesday dispelled rumours that he resented Sarkozy for hogging the limelight and that they weren’t getting along. But Fillon did it in a parody of the questions and answers about Sarkozy’s romantic entanglements that are dominating French civic life these days.

“How does the executive couple work?” Fillon asked himself. “Very well,” he answered himself. “Are you a happy Prime Minister?” he continued. “Yes, I am... when I’m with you.”

Just about everyone else is chatting up their relationship with the President of France. Already three books about his 11-year marriage to his ex- have been published. Cecilia by journalist Anna Bitton came out this week and is already a bestseller. In it, the former first lady is quoted as describing Sarkozy as “out of control” since the divorce and leaping “on girls whose names he can’t even remember”.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy and his presumptive bride appear to have moved on.

La Repubblica is speculating that the couple will honeymoon in San Vito di Negrar near Verona, hometown of Romeo and Juliet. A booking reportedly was made there under Bruni’s name.

Chatting in Doha on Monday night with French journalists,Sarkozy was reported to have affected annoyance describing a recent evening out with Bruni in Paris. By the time they left a restaurant, some 300 people were waiting outside.

Apparently the point is that the public can’t get enough. Newsstands are filled with magazines carrying the new presidential couple on the cover and the Internet is agog, rather, ablog over the President’s social life.