L’Affaire Hollande reminds us that there are two ways to consider a statesman’s private life. He is either a priest, or a king. If he is a priest, he can have only the nation for his mistress: the state is a church, of which he is the national pope; his sex life is sacrificed for the well-being of his fellow citizens.
In France we’ve had some priests. Robespierre, a leader of the French Revolution who unleashed a wave of beheadings, was a chaste man. General Charles de Gaulle was a faithful husband who served as a priest for the glory of France. The United States, as well, has had priest-presidents. Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush were priests, at least as far as we know. But Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton behaved more like kings. There have also been Marxist priests around the world, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and the leaders of North Korea.
What is a king? He’s a man who lists among the pleasures of life the exquisite company of women. To lead armies and to sign treaties are gestures of regal power, but these acts don’t stop men from behaving like Frank Sinatra. In France, all great kings were known for the beauty of their favorites, their legendary mistresses, Diane de Poitiers or Louise de La Vallière, Madame de Montespan or La Du Barry. One king of France who had no mistress, Louis XVI, was sent to the guillotine by Robespierre, who had none either. French monarchs will always prefer a lovely woman to a hideous guillotine.
Other European monarchies behave similarly. Just watch the discreet escapades of the current king of Spain, Juan Carlos. See the illegitimate children of Albert II of Belgium and Albert II of Monaco. Also see Prince Charles of England, who cheated on Diana with Camilla Parker-Bowles, before marrying her.
France is both a republic and an old monarchist country. Its presidents tend to behave like kings. In 1899, President Félix Faure died in the Élysée Palace during an amorous liaison with his mistress, Marguerite Steinheil. Since 1974, all French presidents have been womanizers. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had a weakness for actresses and African beauties. François Mitterrand was famous as a Don Juan, and it was revealed in 1995 that he had a hidden daughter, young Mazarine Pingeot. Jacques Chirac had a revealing nickname: “10 minutes, shower included.” He was thought to prefer loafers to lace-up shoes because they were quicker to remove in cases of a pressing desire. Nicolas Sarkozy got divorced while in power to marry the lovely Carla Bruni.
So we have our modern Louis XIV, our current Mesdames de Maintenon. We even have men who want to be king and behave as if they were riding in a horse-drawn carriage with La Du Barry. Such was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who thought he was king of France when he was only duke of the International Monetary Fund.
François Hollande is no exception to the rule. For a long time, he was an ambitious young man, father of four along with his companion Ségolène Royal. Even though he dreamed of behaving like Dean Martin in the locker rooms of the Las Vegas Sands casino, he had to obey the rules of the French Socialist Party, which is, politically, a party of strict and moralistic bigwigs, a party of priests. Although no one in France should underestimate the Tartuffe character, created by Molière in the 17th century, model of the false bigot who strokes a servant behind walls, like a wigged Elmer Gantry. While getting closer to power, Mr. Hollande started to dream of monarchy, which brought with it access to women.
According to the Kremlinologists of the socialist love science, he started an affair around 2005 with an imperious, beautiful journalist, Valérie Trierweiler. For several years, she stayed a hidden, backstreet mistress. Then Mr. Hollande separated from his children’s mother to live with his mistress. So when he was elected president of the French Republic in 2012, Valérie Trierweiler appeared at his side. At that moment, the scenario was written on the wall: Bewitched by a long dynasty of royal loves, President Hollande was bound to be soon dissatisfied with Madame Trierweiler, his official partner. He needed a Du Barry. As the saying goes, “A man who cheated once will cheat again.”
The Du Barry of 2014 has the face of a charming 41-year-old actress, Julie Gayet. Since we live in a time of paparazzi and soap operas, the lovers have been discovered by a hidden camera, and the pictures have been published in a street magazine. Today, George Washington would be treated just like Kim Kardashian. And here we are, with news of the affair a worldwide buzz, provoking a schizophrenic reaction in France: the priest lying dormant in each of us blames the vagaries of a king that we could well send to the guillotine. But the subjects of the kingdom reflect that a loving monarch is a man with a heart.
Who will win? Robespierre or Félix Faure? Nobody can pretend to know.
Marc Lambron is a novelist and a columnist at the French weekly magazine Le Point. This article was translated from the French by Philippe Gélie.