Paris (AFP)

"Everyone would have liked to know him personally": in front of the Elysee where a line was lying Saturday to sign the guest books in memory of Jacques Chirac, the hour is to the emotion, two days after the death of the former president.

"This is a page that turns," sighs Christine, 60, came to pay homage to a man "volunteer", "who has climbed all the ladder", with a "huge human side". At his side, his son Jean-Baptiste, 29, also supports the emotional link: "It looked a little like my grandpa!"

Saturday, about 500 people had been counted shortly before noon to come to sign the registers of condolences installed at the Elysee, after 2.600 Friday and 700 Thursday night, it was said at the Elysee. In total between 500 and 600 leaflets were filled.

Jacobson, a Franco-Congolese who lives in Neuilly, dressed with special care for the occasion: blue and white three-piece suit, matching tie, felt hat and sunglasses ... "Congolese are sappers + ( in love with beautiful clothes, Ed.), and Chirac too, he was elegant, a politician, a playboy ... "

"It is thanks to him that I became French," he said, clutching in his hand a satchel containing all the letters that the former president had sent him, in response to his greeting cards.

The registers, installed on a glass table under the portrait of the former president, can be signed until 8:00 pm Saturday at the presidential palace. They will then be transferred to the Invalides where they will be available Sunday from 14:00, according to the Elysee.

- "A kind of king" -

Thirty-two-year-old Thibaud will try to visit the Invalides on Sunday, a key moment in the popular tribute to the former head of state, before the national day of mourning scheduled for Monday, with a ceremony at Saint Sulpice and a minute of silence in schools and administrations.

"When I was little, he was a kind of king, I was a fan, and then there was his puppet too" to the Guignols, he recalls with nostalgia: "He had a human side that not everyone not in politics today ".

"It was not perfect, but that's why I love it so much," says the young man, a humanitarian student, who defines himself as "neither right nor left, which was a little his case too.

"He saw us grow up," exclaims Anne, 27, who came with her twin sister Hélène, who wanted to write a few words in the book to say "thank you". According to her, "everyone would have liked to know him personally".

Renato, 39, Franco-Italian who keeps the memory of Jacques Chirac's opposition to the war in Iraq, wanted to bring his 9-year-old daughter "to make him understand what it is that the transmission, the 'history". "And I'm happy to see the Elysee," slips the girl in a pink coat.

Some in the queue, however, are more critical. "He was not a transformer, he did not carry out any major reforms, but he was a good communicator," asserts François, 56, for whom Jacques Chirac was "probably better as mayor (of Paris) than as president ".

This former entrepreneur recognizes that there is a "paradox" coming to sign the registers. But, he says, "it's important to be there because Jacques Chirac is a personality who has left a mark."

© 2019 AFP