The discreet marriage of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the Italian model and singer, drew shrugs in much of France yesterday but not in Neuilly, the opulent western Paris suburb where the President was Mayor for 19 years.

Jean Sarkozy, the President’s 21-year-old son, was congratulated by Sunday market shoppers who wished their best for Sarko and his third wife. Jean, the second son from Mr Sarkozy’s first marriage, was one of 20 guests at the Saturday ceremony in the Elysée Palace. “I hope it will go better for my father now,” the student told The Times as he tasted olives from a market stall. “Things have been pretty difficult lately.”

He was canvassing for David Martinon, 36, his father’s spokesman, who is running for Mayor of Neuilly next month. The polls in all 36,000 French councils are the first electoral test of the presidency and Mr Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) fears that the “Carla effect” will add to their woes.

Jean Sarkozy’s hopes for a turn in his father’s fortunes are shared at the Elysée, which has felt the strain since November when the President, just divorced from Cécilia Ciganer, met Ms Bruni and threw himself into a public courtship while his ratings plummeted. The UMP hopes that the wedding will close a turbulent chapter. “He needed to stabilise his private life,” François D’Orcival, a historian of the presidency, said. “It will be easier for him now that France has a President who is married.”

Mr Sarkozy’s rush to marriage has solved the protocol problems that arose when he travelled with Ms Bruni as an unmarried couple. The new Madame Sarkozy will have full honours on her husband’s state visit to Britain next month, staying as the Queen’s guest at Windsor Castle.

The consensus on radio phone-ins and in café chatter held that Sarko should now focus on the job. “Relief abroad, relief at home, where even the President’s friends were alarmed to see his private life eclipse his political work,” said Le Journal du Dimanche. Mr D’Orcival said that much would depend on the conduct of France’s new première dame, a free-spirited, 40-year-old multimillionairess who is about to release her third album of pop-folk songs.

The media spent the weekend recycling her past, from her time as mistress to Sir Mick Jagger and a cast of stars to the dislike she voiced for both Mr Sarkozy and monogamy in interviews last year.

Bernadette Chirac, the previous first lady, cautiously wished the couple luck as they were going to a Saturday wedding dinner at La Lanterne, the President’s retreat at Versailles. “She is beautiful and I know that they are happy together,” she said. “For France one hopes that they will not have too many difficulties. It is better to have a wife to whom one can tell all, a punching ball.”

It is unclear how “Carlita”, as the 53-year-old President calls her, will combine her new role with her singing and modelling career. Lancia cars have cashed in on her new celebrity with television adverts in which she mimes to the song Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). Her mother, Marisa Borini, insisted that Mr Sarkozy must give her time to work. Her record company is re-releasing in the US and Europe her successful first album and her unsuccessful second, on which she sang in English. “Nico”, as she calls the President, is the subject of a song on her new album.

A sub-plot to the tale is the revenge that Mr Sarkozy has been inflicting on Cécilia. The President has delivered a string of blows to the wife who humiliated him and then left him in distress in October. He invited two of his ex-wife’s confidantes, Agnes Cromback, chief of Tiffany, France, and Mathilde Agostinelli, an executive with Prada, to be witnesses at the wedding. Cécilia was said to be furious.

A UMP official described in yesterday’s papers a hotel dinner two weeks ago. Tony Blair was a guest, along with Ms Bruni. When she left the table, Mr Sarkozy asked Mr Blair: “Do you see how beautiful she is? And she has brains too. That makes a change.”

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