French Front-Runner's American Style

"When Cécilia left him, we saw his cracks, and we realized he couldn't live on his own," said Ridet, who has covered Sarkozy for five years for the newspaper Le Monde.

In his book, Sarkozy conceded that he had exposed his wife to "too much pressure, too many attacks and not enough attention from me. . . . Our relationship didn't hold up."

"Maybe this event forced me to show a bit of my human side that was no doubt lacking," he added. Although they are together again, his wife has no visible presence in the campaign.

Sarkozy has been a professional politician most of his life; by his own admission, he earned a law degree to fall back on in the event he failed at politics. He became one of the youngest French mayors in history after the mayor of the affluent Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine died and Sarkozy, his deputy, took over.

He leapt into the national limelight in 1993 when he helped negotiate a hostage crisis at the town's elementary school, where a man dubbed the "Human Bomb" strapped dynamite to himself and threatened to blow up a class full of children. The man was shot dead by police and all the children escaped unharmed.

Sarkozy was a protege of the current president, Jacques Chirac, but they became bitter adversaries in 1995 when Sarkozy abandoned his mentor and supported a party rival, Édouard Balladur, for president.

Now, as much as any of the other candidates, Sarkozy is running against Chirac's legacy, including the way France tried to generate worldwide opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Even though he has stated that France's decision not to join the war was correct, Sarkozy said in a visit to the United States last year, marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that "it's not appropriate to try and embarrass one's allies or give the impression of gloating over their difficulties."

"My devotion to our relationship with America is well known and has earned me substantial criticism in France," Sarkozy said in a speech to the French-American Foundation in Washington. "I'm not a coward. I'm proud of this friendship, and I proclaim it gladly."

In the town halls of provincial France and the salons of Paris, however, Sarkozy plays down his affinity for America.

Among Frenchmen, said Manuel Aeschlimann, his campaign pollster, "Sarkozy has to be careful when he deals with his attachment to the U.S. If he becomes president, he will improve French-U.S. relations, but he'll have to do it little by little, because public opinion is still suspicious."

Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.