The former First Lady, weakened, does not attend the homage celebrated at the Invalides Sunday, three days after the death of the former President of the Republic.

The French flocked to the Invalides by thousands on Sunday to salute the memory of Jacques Chirac, who died at 86 on Thursday, during a popular tribute that began at 14:00 with an inter-religious ceremony in front of his remains.

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His coffin, covered with red-white blue, and surrounded by French and European flags, under a giant portrait of the former president, was placed at the entrance of the Cathedral Saint-Louis des Invalides. Representatives of the cults sang a prayer, alongside the Chirac family, including his daughter Claude and his grandson Martin, but without his wife Bernadette, weakened. The French then began to parade in front of the coffin of the former head of state, who had left shortly before 1 pm in convoy his home rue de Tournon where he died on Thursday.

"We miss you already"

By early morning, several thousand people had queued in the rain, and the queue was stretched for hundreds of meters. Among them, Marin Menzin and Cyprien Lemaire, 21 and 22 years old, history students in Nancy, came especially for "the president of (their) childhood". "Chirac represented a certain era, he would have seen the tail today, he would have thrown himself into the crowd to shake hands," they say. "We miss you already," could be read on a brandished sign.

A tribute to Jacques Chirac: the French gather on the coffin of the former President pic.twitter.com/8xiPa8RiQF

- BFMTV (@BFMTV) September 29, 2019

Between Thursday and Saturday, some 5,000 people have already signed the registers of condolences made available in the vestibule of the Elysee, to pay tribute to the former president, now considered by the French as the best president of the Fifth Republic, to tie with Charles de Gaulle, according to an Ifop poll for the Sunday newspaper .

Former Jacques Chirac speeches broadcast

A booklet of about ten pages entitled "Jacques Chirac by his words", prepared by the family, was distributed to the audience, said Jacques Chirac's son-in-law, Frédéric Salat-Baroux. "You loved him, respected him, he was part of your youth, of your idea of ​​France, he was the big brother, the father, the imaginary friend, let's try to find him through his words ", is it written in the preamble.

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His speech of Vel 'd'Hiv in 1995, his victory in the second round of the presidential election in 2002, that of the Earth Summit the same year, and again his goodbye to the French in 2007 will be broadcast, with a sequel from Bach in interlude.

Thirty heads of state will be present on Monday

This tribute will be followed by a day of national mourning on Monday. A solemn service chaired by Emmanuel Macron will be held at 12 o'clock in the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris, in the presence of former presidents François Hollande, Nicolas Sarkozy and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Among the 30 heads of state, will be present Russian President Vladimir Putin, the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, the German Presidents Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Italian Sergio Mattarella and Congolese Denis Sassou Nguesso, the Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, or Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Hungarian Viktor Orban. Among former leaders of Jacques Chirac's time will come former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and former Senegalese President Abdou Diouf.

The French political class should also be widely represented, until the president of the RN Marine Le Pen, she whose father had made Jacques Chirac an "enemy". According to a source close to the family, the Chirac clan has learned through the press this coming he does not want, but that is by right protocol.