WHETHER or not she is aghast at the alacrity with which Nicolas Sarkozy has found a new girlfriend, Cecilia, his former wife, was reported last week to be working on a memoir of her difficult years with the French president.

The project is surrounded by such secrecy that, according to one report in Paris, not even the domestic intelligence service has been able to find out who the publisher is. The secrecy is understandable: Cecilia’s last effort at producing a book was thwarted when Sarkozy ordered the publisher to destroy the entire print run.

Talk of the new project was raising blood pressure in a presidential entourage already jittery about the public spectacle that “Sarko” has made of his romance with Carla Bruni, the Italian model turned singer.

Political foes claim that the president’s recent Egyptian idyll with Bruni, when he whisked her off to the banks of the Nile aboard the jet of a billionaire friend, is evidence of the abuse of presidential power in pursuit of personal pleasure.

“This presidency makes me think of the decadence of the Romans,” said Arnaud Montebourg, an ambitious Socialist MP. “The rulers make merry while the people struggle to make ends meet.”

Others have accused Sarkozy of trying to distract public attention from a host of economic problems with a presidential soap opera that has the Elysee Palace as its sumptuous backdrop. According to Segolene Royal, last year’s failed Socialist presidential contender, Sarkozy is “undermining the dignity” of his office.

An unapologetic Sarkozy nevertheless tried to strike a different tone in a solemn New Year’s Eve address to the nation, promising to put France at the forefront of a global “renaissance” by pursuing a “policy of civilisation”. He also vowed to make the capitalist system more “moral”.

He had been accused of favouring business contracts over human rights and some were putting the sudden change of emphasis down to a “Bruni effect”: the singer, whose previous conquests have included the rock stars Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, has sometimes described her heart as being “on the left”.

Whatever the case, the 52-year-old president’s infatuation with a woman often described as a “man-eater” has raised concern among his staff.

Pictures of the Rayban-wearing Sarkozy canoodling with Bruni, 41, in a felucca on the Nile were just as unappealing for Cecilia, with whom Sarkozy has a 10-year-old son. The glossy magazines have portrayed Bruni, who has the same high cheekbones and dark hair as the 50-year-old Cecilia, as a younger, more glamorous version of her.

Physical similarities between the two prompted speculation that Sarkozy might still be fixated upon his errant former wife. He fell in love with her when, as mayor of the Parisian suburb of Neuilly, he officiated at her marriage to her first husband in 1984. When Cecilia left Sarkozy for another man in 2005, he did not rest until he had won her back.

After his election triumph he hoped that she would enjoy the role of “first lady”.

It was not to be, however, and some have suggested that he paraded his romance with Bruni to spite Cecilia for causing him such grief. She insisted on a divorce last October.

She had just as much reason as Sarkozy to feel wronged, it seems. Her departure in 2005 followed claims that he had been unfaithful to her; and while she was with a lover in New York, Sarkozy set up home with a political journalist in Paris. Although Cecilia returned to Sarkozy in time for the presidential election campaign, she gave him the cold shoulder, not even voting for him or turning up for the victory dinner.

The Elysee Palace fears that, despite having said that she wanted to “live in the shadows”, she might use the book – which would supposedly take the form of an extended interview – to vent grievances.

In a previous memoir, on which she collaborated with Valerie Domain, a journalist, she described being treated like a piece of “furniture” when her husband was interior minister and said that this was one of the reasons she had left him for Richard Attias, a New York-based events organiser.

That book never saw the light of day. After a meeting with Sarkozy in the interior ministry, the publisher agreed to destroy the book before it went on sale.

Domain, who eventually published it as a “novel”, said that she was aware of Cecilia’s latest project but wondered whether it would come to fruition. “She says one thing, then does something completely different,” Domain said last week. “So it’s hard to know what her plans are or whether there really will be a book.”

Since the divorce, Cecilia has divided her time between London, where one of her daughters works and where she has several friends, and Neuilly, where Louis, her son, is at school.

Sarkozy’s ministers, at least, have reason to thank Bruni: the president seems to be in particularly good cheer and has, for now at least, ruled out a much-rumoured cabinet reshuffle.

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