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October 3rd, 2013 
Peter Nolan
As for heading straight for a billionaire’s yacht after his victory, that was
Mr Sarkozy’s idea to please their son Louis.
She also justifies her decision not to turn up to vote for her husband in 2007
— she couldn’t take the cameras – and her hesitation about turning up to his
victory celebrations.
She also recounts her surreal meeting with the late Libyan leader Muammar
Gaddafi in her successful bid to rescue a group of Bulgarian nurses and a
doctor spuriously imprisoned for spreading AIDS. She describes the now
defunct dictator as looking like an “old, decrepit actor with a swollen
face, weary features, an actor as bad as the décor he moved in.” After being
made to wait for hours in the desert for him to show up, the then French
First Lady laid into Col Gaddafi in order to “surprise” him and gain the
upper hand. “Do you have any idea about the way you have allowed me to be
treated?,” she exclaimed as an opening gambit to “knock him off balance”.
“And I would ask you not to come near me!” she went on. Col Gaddafi said he
had been informed that she was taking an afternoon nap.
After realising that the sticking point was not with the dictator but his
government and above all his son, Saif, Cecilia harangued her notoriously
temperamental interlocutor, telling him there was no way her husband would
visit Libya if the nurses and doctor were not freed.
“You’re not an easy person” he shouted finally, before exclaiming: “Oh
alright, I’ll give you the nurses. OK, I’ll give them to you! Are you happy
now?”
Mrs Attias, 55, a tall, glamorous former model of Russian-Spanish origin, was
described as her diminutive second husband’s “control tower,” keeping him on
an even keel and advising him on appointments as he rose through government.
It was often said a word from Cecilia in her husband’s ear could make or break
political careers, and introduced several of her close friends to Mr Sarkozy
including his justice minister, Rachida Dati.
But she denies influencing his choice of advisers, saying: “I neither drove
policies — in the name of what could I do that? — nor whispered solutions,
nor contributed to the choice of this person, to the promotion of that one
or the departure of another,” she writes.
For a time the couple lived out an American-style public idyll, photographed
hand in hand on glossy magazine covers. But in 2005, their very un-French
media exposure backfired spectacularly when the couple split up for several
months.
Mr Sarkozy admitted the break left him profoundly “shaken”.
She returned, only to exclaim: “I do not see myself as a first lady. It bores
me. I prefer going round in combat trousers and cowboy boots. I don’t fit
the mould.”
Shortly after his election victory, she left for Mr Attias and lives with him
in New York.
Clearly the most damaging extract from the book for a man widely tipped to be
seeking to make a presidential comeback bid in 2017 is Mrs Attias’ comments
on Mr Sarkozy’s temperament and political judgment.
“It is strange that a man who in private was totally placid and would never
raise his voice could — notably later — give such an impulsive image of
himself,” she writes.
“Perhaps he forgot the terrible rages he put his aides through, but not them
He who was so attentive to victims and those left by the wayside showed a
worrying impulsiveness and multiplied shocking comments,” she writes.
“To finish, in 2012, he went after voters on the extremes – where incidentally
he didn’t find any – when any political analyst will tell you that in
France, like in most major democracies, elections are won in the centre.”
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