• Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, the love story that caused the scandal

  • Why does a man look at an older woman?

In May 1968, while Paris was burning and university students were looking for the beach under the cobblestones in the Latin Quarter, a love story shocked France.

Gabrielle Russier,

a 30-year-old high school teacher, fell in love with one of her students,

Christian Rossi,

16. Christian passionately reciprocated Gabrielle's passionate love.

Jailed for corruption of minors, Gabrielle committed suicide.

She fell in love, they imprisoned her, she committed suicide.

It's that simple.

To make amends to Gabrielle,

Charles Aznavour

composed 'Mourir d'aimer' and with that title the director André Cayatte told that tragic 'love story' in the cinema.

Twenty years after that 'affair', Brigitte Trogneux and Emmanuel Macron staged a 'revival'.

Although this time with

a happy end.

So chic, so Bovary

Brigitte was born into a family of pastry chefs known for their 'macarons', which sounds like the president's last name.

In 1992, she was a French and Latin teacher at a high school in Amiens.

She had been part of the figure skating team of her city and was thin, aware of her look of tanned skin, stainless smile and

a fan of rock and whiskey and cola.

Married with three children, her husband was a banker from Amiens;

but she,

dissatisfied,

identified with Madame Bovary.

She was 39 years old and had walked away from cherry weather, unruly pimple adolescence, and Saturday night fever in her miniskirt and leather boots.

One day, returning from school, his daughter Laurence told him:

"There is a crazy person in my class who knows everything about everything!".

The know-it-all was a precocious 'teenager', his name was Emmanuel Macron, he was 15 years old and the judgment of someone twice as old, more enlightened, more heated than any kid you have ever known.

His teachers soon realized that he already knew everything they could teach him and imagined that he would become famous.

And he lived in that idea:

behind the rainbow he saw a pot of gold.

Brigitte and Emmanuel met at the La Providence high school theater club, which she took care of.

Difficult to know if it was providence, that she plays dice, or the devil that got into their bodies.

The fact is that they were fatally wounded by Cupid's arrows.

In drama class, she had a hard time hiding her admiration for Emmanuel's talent, who dazzled her with her intelligence and maturity.

There was fear.

In the arms of the mature woman

Love destroyed everything and Brigitte divorced.

She couldn't help it.

Her older parents didn't take it too well, but the age difference wasn't a problem for her.

The most important thing was her children, who accepted it.

"The rest was scum",

she would tell 'Paris Match' years later.

For the boy's parents, wealthy doctors, that meeting in the first phase did not have a pass.

The relationship was

frowned upon by the flock and prohibited by law;

so they sent him to study in Paris to get him away from a forbidden relationship.

"You won't get rid of me, I'll come back and marry you!" the teenager told the teacher, so chic, so 'affranchie', so Bovary.

Then he stole a kiss from her.

She liked this prodigy of audacity.

A fascinating seducer.

When love is more, the identity card is the least of it and, after finishing his Finance studies at the elite National School of Administration (ENA), Emmanuel returned to the arms of mature women.

Total, it was not a passion.

Absolutely.

It was love.

Passion is not lucid.

Macron

got rich with the Rothschild Bank, he

was a good financier and philosopher specialized in Machiavelli.

Also, he played the piano.

Brigitte and Emmanuel kept their 'belle histoire' a secret.

Aware that they were breaking the codes of bourgeois and conservative France, which punished Gabrielle and Christian with inquisitorial cruelty,

when they married in 2007 (15 years after they met) they did so without light and without stenographers.

On weekends they met with her children - Sébastien, Laurence and Tiphaine - at her pretty house in Le Touquet.

They took eight years to make their first public appearance, it was during

a dinner with our Kings

Felipe and Letizia.

a ridiculous hoax

Emmanuel and Brigitte

are separated by the same years as Donald Trump (75) from Melania (51), that is, 24;

but vice versa.

For this reason, and because without having done it, the father has made her husband seven times a grandfather, they form an unprecedented presidential 'couple' that has aroused great expectations in a 'boulevard' press that makes cash counting with hair and signs a bizarre love, in the French sense of the word.

Brigitte Macron, dressed in Louis Vuitton, as soon as she learned that he was renewing his mandate. Gtres

Their relationship was subjected to scrutiny and sometimes misunderstood.

In the 2017 election campaign it was suggested that they were a front couple, a trompe l'oeil to hide candidate Macron's homosexuality;

etiquette that went wrong with calling his wife

"cougar",

a slang term that is not exactly flattering and describes the curdled ladies who prefer the jocks.

At the end of last year, when the elections were approaching, the first lady had to file a complaint for a false news claiming that she was born a man.

The hoax of that

alleged transsexuality,

hatched in the basements of the extreme right, was as ridiculous as it was malicious.

The melonada was of no use to them.

Not only is Macron the only president to repeat a mandate in the last two decades, but the couple form a team of inseparable Siamese twins who offer themselves as two heads of state for the price of one.

The French know that she has been a good asset for the president:

an accomplice and magnet for the female vote,

she advises him, helps him plan his agenda and sell an image of modernity.

She was the one who chose the name

En Marche!

for the first candidacy of her husband (the initials coincided with those of the candidate).

At a rally in his first presidential campaign, Macron said: "He will not be behind or hidden, he will be by my side."

And she has been there from minute one.

There it goes and there it will stay.

To him, Brigitte means everything.

He does not have great confidants: Brigitte is enough for him.

She has been his Pygmalion.

Without her, Macron is not understood.

From casual to Vuitton

When he arrived at the Elysee, he praised his wife several times.

"Her best ally?" he asked 'L'Express', referring to Brigitte.

They are inseparable,

overflowing with love and breaking molds

when they are photographed at their 'vie en château' in Le Touquet with their seven grandchildren and 'Nemo', their precious Labrador Retriever-Griffon cross, who walks around the Elysee like a dog around the house of the.

When they became the couple of the moment, the big brands began to seduce Brigitte, who wore clothes on loan from

LVMH,

the great luxury empire led by Bernard Arnault, in the 2017 campaign.

She used to be a big fan of casual-chic and dressed as expected of a cool teacher.

The transformation began in 2015, when she met Delphine Arnault, deputy general manager of Louis Vuitton, who gave her some advice.

Since then, she has had more than one trick in his wardrobe, full of the LVMH group's collections, as well as designs from French maisons such as

Olivier Rousteing's Balmain.

Structured blazers, skinny jeans, shift dresses, stiletto heels, leather pants and sneakers are Madame Macron's essentials.

She thus has earned the nickname

"First Lady of Chic".

The spotlights don't seem to bother him;

all the better, because the current hypermediatization makes impossible the invisibility that Yvonne de Gaulle had, who, even married to a national hero, could go shopping without being recognized.

Something now unthinkable for those who -'bon gré mal gré'- are forced to exercise, at the very least,

public relations, fashion ambassador and starlet.

Your husband's position is not a burden.

She loves to get into the kitchen of power.

She is no longer Emma Bovary, but she is still a fictional character.

An Egeria who made a good ruler of the second king of Rome.

The president and his wife share the results account of a race.

republican queen

But what exactly is Brigitte's function?

Specifically, none.

Legally, the first lady does not exist: she does not appear in the Constitution nor does she have any official status.

However, she can be expensive.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy cost the French state more than 60,000 euros a month,

which did not shake anyone's conscience, quite the contrary, because public opinion has developed a fascination, sometimes obsessive, for the president's companion.

Actually, this figure is one of the most conservative dressings of the Fifth Republic, because it not only mimics the role of a queen, but also shows the sexism of a society that expects her to fulfill the roles of mother and wife.

Keep the fireplace burning, go.

Even Carla Bruni, not exactly a flower girl, knew that a substantial part of her job was

keeping the president happy.

The queen of the French Republic represents the country and its 'grandeur'.

So, all the better if she has class -'comme il faut'-, because she is the guarantee of the president's supposed fidelity, which is hypocrisy as a piano because, in fact,

the last five heads of state were unfaithful.

None of this is scandalized

by our neighbors to the north, who react to the escapades of their presidents by limiting themselves to 'hausser les épaules', which is how they say smoking a cigar in French.

The French not only have hundreds of cheeses, but also many other ways of being tolerant.

They were not, however, with poor Gabrielle Russier, and neither with the asymmetric courtship of Emmanuel and Brigitte, whom their friends treated as plague victims;

but they have ended up being with Brigitte, 'La Liberada', as the journalist Maelle Brun calls her in the book she has written about her.

Free spirits always reveal, despite themselves, the depths of their nature.

Brigitte's has

a romantic touch and the foam of audacity.

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