THERE is no example of modern French engineering more breathtaking than the Millau viaduct, spanning the Tarn valley in southern France. Nicolas Sarkozy, the interior minister, seemed inspired by its harmony last week as he stepped up his campaign to become president.

“It is beautiful, magical, magnificent,” he enthused, marvelling at the fact that one of the bridge’s pillars is taller than the Eiffel tower. “This is the incarnation of what is most modern in France.”

The 51-year-old Sarkozy visited the viaduct, which opened in 2004, as part of a new campaign strategy to soften the rough edges that won him renown as the tough-talking minister who brought in zero tolerance policing.

“I don’t want to divide people,” he told The Sunday Times as he gazed in awe at the cable bridge designed in collaboration with Norman Foster, the British architect. “I want to unite people. I don’t want to destroy, I want to build.”

The backdrop for Friday’s outing was far removed from the suburban battleground with which he has been associated since 2005, when his reference to rampaging youths as “thugs” and “scum” was deemed to have triggered more rioting.

Sarkozy, a diminutive figure in a dark cashmere overcoat and shiny loafers, is usually a blur of activity but he seemed strangely relaxed as he contemplated the highest vehicle-bearing bridge in the world. He had every reason to be.

His party seemed more united than it had been for years, even though Jacques Chirac, the president, has yet to give his blessing to Sarkozy, with whom he has been at loggerheads for years.

On Monday, in a far cry from his usual, scrappy interventions as the man in charge of the police, Sarkozy communed with seabirds on the ramparts of Mont-Saint-Michel, the island monastery and centre of spirituality, in an attempt to portray a meditative, presidential streak.

Then it emerged that he had agreed to give Yasmina Reza the country’s most commercially successful playwright, who wrote Art, access to his daily life so that she can write a portrait of his “existential inner being”.

At the same time, Ségolène Royal, his chief rival, appeared to have stumbled badly for the first time since the Socialist party chose her over two male rivals as its candidate and Sarkozy, fresh from his own triumphant coronation ceremony as the centre-right candidate, overtook her in the polls.

Sarkozy, who has known his share of marital discord — Cecilia, his wife, briefly left him for another man before returning to the family fold last January — sounded oddly sympathetic over the extraordinary rumpus in the Royal camp.

Royal and her husband, François Hollande, the Socialist party secretary general, have been rowing in public about whether or not to raise taxes. One of her spokesmen was sacked for calling Hollande — who had wanted to be a candidate himself and has been making pronouncements without consulting his partner — her one “defect”.

Sarkozy said: “In a campaign there are always lots of difficult moments. I personally have known lots of difficult moments and I am sure I will know many more. What matters is what I am going to do for the country.”

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Fish and chip shops ‘selling cobbler as cod’
• T in the Park festival at Kinross
• How to get Madonna’s Thighs