THINGS have been going well in recent weeks for Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. Seeing him on the telephone to Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, while on holiday last month in the south of France, a friend called out from the other side of the swimming pool: "You are the master of the world."

Sarkozy, 53, who has sometimes been compared to Napoleon, may well believe it. From Kabul to Tbilisi, the pint-sized leader has a dog in each fight. He even struck out last week at Somali pirates who had taken a French couple hostage in the Gulf of Aden and stayed up all night to receive a blow-by-blow account of the daring rescue mission.

There is nothing like a vindictive former wife. however, for puncturing presidential pomp. The sudden reappearance on stage of Cécilia, who left Sarkozy for another man, was an unwelcome surprise for the French leader just when he thought that his troubled ex had been written out of the drama.

Cécilia, 50, was divorced from the president last October to marry Richard Attias, a Moroccan-born events organiser, but does not seem to have overcome the bitterness that prompted her, shortly after the separation, to accuse the hyperactive "Sarko" of being a karaoke-obsessed egotist incapable of true love.