IN THE chic Violon d’ingres restaurant a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower, the appearance of two elegant, well-groomed women created something of a buzz.
On one table, Carla BruniSarkozy was lunching with her agent, having just returned from a triumphant state visit to London with her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Dining with friends on another was Valérie Trierweiler, the long-time mistress of François Hollande, the former head of the Socialist Party and now France’s leading presidential challenger.
The women could not fail to notice each other, but had never met, raising the thorny social question of who would make the first move; in the end, a third guest introduced them and they ended up chatting over coffee.
At least two professional photographers were present — one of them a former paparazzo — but no pictures have ever emerged of the meeting between a first lady and a first lady in-waiting.
With exactly three months to go to the presidential election in April, Mr Sarkozy, 56, the so-called “Omnipresident”, and Mr Hollande, nicknamed “Monsieur Normal”,
People want to know who is going to be in the Elysée with the president
are engaged in what promises to be an increasingly spiteful and tight race for victory.
Though Mr Sarkozy, who is the underdog according to the polls, has yet officially to declare his intention to stand, he is preparing the ground.
Mr Hollande, 57, won the Socialist Party presidential nomination last year after the previous front-runner, Dominique Strauss-kahn, was arrested on attempted rape charges, later dropped, in New York. Mr Hollande will officially launch his campaign today with the first of seven public rallies.
Neither Mr Hollande nor Mr Sarkozy is foolish enough to deploy their glamorous partners too overtly; a move that could put off an electorate that still prefers politicians to keep their private lives just that.
But it is clear that both Mrs Bruni-sarkozy, 44, and Miss Trierweiler — the wife of one candidate versus the girlfriend of another — are a vital part of the campaign arsenal for both men.
Indeed, just days after it was announced that Miss Trierweiler, 46, a former Paris Match journalist, was to have her own office in Mr Hollande’s campaign headquarters, Mrs Bruni-sarkozy declared that she would be doing her bit for her husband’s campaign.
Making her first official public appearance since the birth of their daughter, Giulia, in October, Mrs BruniSarkozy said she would be “right by his side if he chooses to stand”.
It remains to be seen whether Mrs Bruni-sarkozy, a supermodel-turned-singer, actress and mother, can help her husband overcome his many recent political set- backs, which include unemployment at a 12-year high, the loss of France’s triple A credit rating and the euro crisis.
But juggling the issues with the women in his life is likely to be somewhat trickier for Mr Hollande, who also has to keep happy his ex-partner, Ségolène Royal, herself a presidential candidate five years ago.
Though Miss Royal, mother of his four children, has said she will support Mr Hollande, there is little love lost between her and his new girlfriend.
Mr Hollande and Miss Trierweiler, a political journalist, met in 2005; a meeting she describes as a “coup de foudre” (a lightning strike) in which she fell “head over heels” in love with the then chubby, bespectacled head of the Socialist Party.
At the time he was still with Miss Royal and put on a show of unity with her during her 2007 presidential bid. But soon after that flopped, he walked out to be with Miss Trierweiler, eventually going public about their relationship in 2010.
While the French public seems to have forgiven Mr Hollande for deceiving them, Miss Royal may not have done.
Miss Trierweiler is a twicedivorced mother of three, who told Elle magazine that Mr Hollande was the “man of my life” and confessed she found him attractive even before he lost a couple of stone in prep- aration for his presidential bid.
Born in Angers, the fifth of six children, her mother worked as a receptionist at the local ice-skating rink. Her father lost his leg stepping on an abandoned wartime mine and died when Valérie was 21 years old.
After studying at the Sorbonne, she became a journalist and later joined Paris Match, where she met and married fellow journalist Denis Trierweiler, with whom she had three children. But she divorced him after meeting Mr Hollande.
Colleagues have described her as “very punchy, very honest, intelligent and nononsense”, and still talk of the time she allegedly slapped a male colleague who made a sexist comment.
She is credited with having persuaded Mr Hollande to lose weight, buy sharper suits and generally clean up his act, although she denies this.
She is, however, a stickler for detail, once writing to a magazine editor to demand a correction to an article that suggested Mr Hollande dyed his hair.
Frédéric Micheau, the deputy director of French pollsters IFOP, said that with the political and economic issues in France so extremely serious, the challenge for both candidates would be to decide at what point to bring out their women.
“People want to know who is going to be there in the Elysée with the elected president,” Mr Micheau said. “The difficulty is knowing when to do this.”
Mrs Bruni-sarkozy and Miss Trierweiler, both singleminded career women in a former life, seem happy to sacrifice their careers for love.
Until recently, Miss Trierweiler presented a weekly television political programme called Campaign Portraits, interviewing presidential candidates. She was forced to resign over an obvious conflict of interests.
Mrs Bruni-sarkozy has given up touring as a singer, although she continues to write songs, record albums and had a cameo role in Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris.
However, whatever French men may think of them both, a survey by Harris Interactive pollsters for Grazia magazine last year suggested that most French women were indifferent to the charms of either.
Mr Micheau’s guidance for both men was to use their partners in a low-key fashion.
“When Mr Sarkozy was first elected, he was reproached for being too ‘celebrity’, too ‘bling’, too showbiz,” he said.
“He doesn’t want to revive that image on the eve of an election, so he’d be advised to use his wife for publicity with parsimony and sobriety.
“And the same applies to François Hollande, who wants to be ‘Mr Normal’.”
Carla Bruni-sarkozy, left, and Valérie Trierweiler have pledged to assist their partners in the French presidential election