BY JULIE DAVIDSON

QUELLE madame. What a dame. Cecilia Sarkozy, the occasional consort of the new French president until their divorce in October, is the woman who gave up a king for a cowherd. (Sort of: the man she currently loves is Richard Attias, sometimes called an advertising executive, sometimes called an events organiser, but always called wealthy.) She has spurned every recent role at her disposal: trophy wife, loyal helpmeet, political fixer and - for lesser mortals perhaps the most seductive - first lady of France, with all the glamour, privilege and influence that come with the tenancy of the Élysée Palace.

Hurrah! No more sickly smiles, clammy hand-holding, tedious photo-shoots, ponderous public duties. Pausing only to spring five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor from a Libyan prison, this admirable "free spirit" tolerated only six months in the job. It's claimed she planned her divorce back in April, a month before she turned up at the last minute for the presidential inauguration, having holidayed in Florida during the most crucial stage of her husband's campaign and neglected to appear at the vote count.

How very different from the lives of our own dear first ladies, Sarah, Cherie (most conspicuously Cherie!) and all their predecessors, including Denis Thatcher. Daughter of a Russian émigré and a Spanish-Belgian mother, Cecilia's history shows a restless nature. She has been drop-out law student, parliamentary assistant, public relations consultant, fitting model for Schiaparelli and technical adviser to her husband when he was minister of economy. She was also a loose cannon in the minefield of marriage - her own and other people's - long before Nicolas Sarkozy's political career went stellar.

They dumped their existing spouses to live with each other in 1988. At the time Sarkozy was Mayor of Neuilly, the posh Paris suburb, and although he was still married to his first wife, Cecilia insisted on being called Madame Sarkozy. It's gossiped that the snooty hostesses of Neuilly preferred the soubriquet "mayor's whore". They married in 1996, but the once-cherished title of Madame Sarkozy had lost its magic by 2005, when she left him, saying she had begun "to feel like a piece of furniture", and had a very public affair with her present lover.

Her husband wasted no time in dallying with a French journalist, but the couple were reconciled when Sarkozy began to campaign for the presidency. Cynics assumed the allure of becoming first lady had made her husband more attractive again, but a close friend claimed the contrary: "She went back to him because she didn't want his defeat blamed on her." After he was elected, Cecilia herself sent out signals, ducking out of her uxorious duties at the G8 summit, turning down lunch with George and Laura Bush.

For one who has said she "prefers the shadows, serenity and tranquillity", Cecilia Sarkozy generated a lot of limelight in 2007. The press called her "enigmatic"; maybe she is simply a woman whose appetite for romance is stronger than her desire for prestige. Vive l'amour!