THINGS have been going well in recent weeks for Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. Seeing him on the telephone to Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, while on holiday last month in the south of France, a friend called out from the other side of the swimming pool: “You are the master of the world.”

Sarkozy, 53, who has sometimes been compared to Napoleon, may well believe it. From Kabul to Tbilisi, the pint-sized leader has a dog in each fight. He even struck out last week at Somali pirates who had taken a French couple hostage in the Gulf of Aden and stayed up all night to receive a blow-by-blow account of the daring rescue mission.

There is nothing like a vindictive former wife. however, for puncturing presidential pomp. The sudden reappearance on stage of Cécilia, who left Sarkozy for another man, was an unwelcome surprise for the French leader just when he thought that his troubled ex had been written out of the drama.

Cécilia, 50, was divorced from the president last October to marry Richard Attias, a Moroccan-born events organiser, but does not seem to have overcome the bitterness that prompted her, shortly after the separation, to accuse the hyperactive “Sarko” of being a karaoke-obsessed egotist incapable of true love.

In an interview with a Swiss newspaper last week she suggested that the French president, who is known for fits of temper and a ruthless streak, was to blame for getting her husband sacked from organising a prestigious gathering of world leaders.

The president’s office denied that he had played any role in sabotaging Attias’s career, saying that he was happily remarried and had “long since moved on”.

Yet the willingness of Sarkozy, who had promised “rupture” with France’s bad old ways of the past, to use presidential clout for personal ends has led to caricatures of him in the French press as a latterday King Louis.

He does not hesitate to throw his weight about, for example, when it comes to helping friends or hindering foes: the Corsican police chief was dismissed recently for letting nationalists stage a peaceful protest in the holiday villa of one of the president’s actor friends.

In similar vein, the president was credited with the sacking of Patrick Poivre d’Arvor as the presenter of an evening television news programme. He was replaced this month by Laurence Ferrari, a blonde star who was said to have enjoyed a brief romance with Sarkozy after his divorce.

According to Cécilia, Attias, 48, was told on the day of their marriage that his services were no longer required as an organiser of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Klaus Schwab, the business professor who founded the forum in 1971, did not want it “to be at loggerheads with the French government”, she claimed.

“It was a nice wedding present,” said an ironic Cécilia. “Since then I have learnt that the French president will probably attend the next Davos although he had never gone before.”

A source in the Publicis communications company acknowledged that efforts had been under way to secure attendance by a French leader at the Davos event, whose participants have included Tony Blair and Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.

“You could hardly expect [Sarkozy] to show up in the knowledge that his former wife’s new husband is the organiser,” said the source, although he added that he had no knowledge of the circumstances of Attias’s dismissal.

A spokesman for the World Economic Forum denied that it had sacked Attias, describing him as simply a “subcontractor”. Mark Adams said: “We never employed him directly, so we couldn’t sack him.” A presidential spokesman said he did not know if Sarkozy would be attending the next Davos summit but noted that he was scheduled to speak at the World Policy Conference, a rival forum set up by the French Institute of International Relations, in Evian, home of the mineral water, next month.

As for Cécilia, she has an axe to grind, not least over the speed with which she was replaced as first lady. It was only four months after her divorce that Sarkozy married Carla Bruni, the former top model and singer. She has the same high cheek bones as Cécilia – also a former model – but is 10 years her junior.

At the same time, while Bruni claims to have “calmed down” the fidgety, micro-managing Sarkozy, he may have just as much reason as Cécilia for feeling bitter about the past. Cécilia had conducted a long affair with Attias, leaving Sarkozy for him twice in the run-up to the presidential election in May last year.

Furthermore, it emerged that she did not even vote for Sarkozy, having decided on divorce long before he began hailing her as the perfect first lady.

He later took his revenge on her political protégés, several of whom were abruptly dumped from his staff. Others managed to stay in favour, among them Rachida Dati, the 43-year-old justice minister, whose recently announced pregnancy has Paris abuzz with speculation about the identity of the father.

Mathilde Agostinelli, a Prada executive who had initially been a friend of Cécilia, was a witness at Sarkozy’s marriage to Bruni.

“I’ve been betrayed by some close friends,” said Cécilia last week. “I don’t have it in for them. Human nature is like that. I understand that the gilded splendour of the republic might have tempted more than one of them.”

She and Attias have moved to Dubai, where he runs the newly founded Dubai Event Management Corporation. Louis, the 11-year old son Cécilia had with Sarkozy, has been enrolled in a local French school.

Cécilia says she is engaged in various humanitarian causes and plans to participate in a “women’s conference” organised by Maria Shriver, the wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Californian governor, in Los Angeles next month. There she will hold a public debate with Cherie Blair, wife of the former British prime minister, on “how a woman’s voice can change the world”.

The only voice that seemed to interest Sarkozy, however, was that of his new wife, whose efforts to promote her latest album included an appearance on British television last week.

She is credited with helping Sarkozy to regain the public’s affection and his approval rating has risen to 47%, from 35% in July.

One factor in his favour is the collapse of the Socialist opposition. Another is the wider international stage upon which he has been allowed to strut – as head of the European Union’s rotating presidency – until the end of the year.

Even so, Sarkozy cannot seem to let a minute pass without exercising his presidential power in one way or another. It emerged that when he was on holiday at his wife’s family villa in Cap Nègre last month he managed to settle – in between calls from Putin and other world leaders at the height of the Georgian crisis – a local residents’ association dispute over the cost a new sewerage system.

It seems that the local commune, rather than the Brunis and their neighbours, will end up footing most of the bill. If only international disputes were so easily resolved.

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