A FORMER assistant to Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, is to publish an unflattering portrait of her this week, prompting fresh allegations of “dirty tricks” in an increasingly grubby election campaign that does not officially begin until April.

The latest opinion polls show the telegenic Royal, 53, losing ground to Nicolas Sarkozy, the 51-year-old centre-right interior minister as the bruising battle for the Elysée becomes focused on personality rather than policy.

After hotly disputed allegations about her tax affairs and her relationship with François Hollande, her party boss and the father of her four children, Royal will take little comfort from the memoirs of Evelyne Pathouot, 55, who worked as an assistant at her constituency office between 1995 and 1997, when Royal was an MP for Deux-Sèvres in western France.

The book, Ségolène Royal, Ombre et Lumière (Shadow and Light), which is due out on Thursday, portrays Royal as cold, selfish, irascible and alternately lightweight and authoritarian in her political dealings.

However, the insights it promises into her character — for instance, when she is forced to choose between caring for a son with appendicitis and hosting President Jacques Chirac in her home town — are somewhat clouded by the fact that Pathouot now works for two MPs in Sarkozy’s UMP party.

The Royal camp condemns the claims in the book as politically motivated “stupidities”. Pathouot, who has fought a 10- year legal battle with her former employer over an allegedly unpaid salary, says that she has always had centre-right sympathies but denies setting out to undermine Royal in the build-up to voting at the end of April.

“I decided to write the book because I didn’t recognise Ségolène in what I read about her. I want to show how she really is,” said Pathouot, a cheerful, divorced mother-of-two, in an interview. She was hired by Royal in the autumn of 1995.

“I fell for her at first because Ségolène was a woman, she was young, new and dynamic,” recalled Pathouot, who was born in Burgundy and formerly worked as a health service administrator.

Doubts set in when Royal apparently failed to pay her way during their time together. “At lunches Ségolène always said to me, ‘Evelyne, would you lend me something? I don’t have any money’.” In her book, Pathouot writes cautiously: “Avarice or negligence, it’s impossible for me to say.”

On a number of occasions, Pathouot put Royal up for the night. “After dinner she just got up and said she was going to bed. No help with the washing up and no chat,” Pathouot said.

“I’d wake her up at 7.30am, then get my two sons ready and off to school. When I came back at about 8.20am, she’d still be in bed. I felt as if I had a third child to handle.”

In 1996 Royal was dining in her constituency with Chirac when she found out that her son Julien, nine at the time, had been taken to hospital in Paris with appendicitis.

Chirac offered to lend her his private plane so she could fly to Paris, but she declined. Instead, Royal arranged to be driven there overnight and back again in time for Chirac’s news conference the next day.

“It was out of the question for me to accept anything whatsoever from Jacques Chirac,” Royal is said to have told her assistant. “I want to remain free to say what I think of him.”

According to Pathouot, Royal then said, “He is due to be operated on about now”, and telephoned her son.

“Julien was apparently waking up after the operation. He was crying and Ségolène told him not to worry, that people would come and see him.”

Pathouot said that as a mother she had been “mortified” by Royal’s behaviour.

A source close to Royal dismissed Pathouot’s account. “How can she explain that there are people who have been working with Royal for 18 years? Royal is demanding with herself as she is with others,” the source said. “You know Pathouot works for the UMP. The attack is a bit coarse, there is a wish to harm, that’s all. It’s a political tract.”

The criticisms certainly appear to fit the recent pattern of negative campaigning. This weekend Sarkozy faced renewed claims that his office had asked the Renseignements Généraux (RG), the French equivalent of MI5, to investigate Royal’s finances.

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