Lisa, you ask whether Sarkozy “marrying the trophy girlfriend five minutes after the ex-wife dumped him makes him look better or worse.” It’s Carla Bruni we’re talking about, Lisa: the answer is “better.” And if it doesn’t work out, no matter. Your limit of three wives seems a touch stingy by the way. Henry VIII, that most splendid of kings (let the e-mails fly!), managed six, after all, some of whom were indeed not entirely suitable. Why should a French head of state be expected to lag behind?

Anyway, I don’t think that Ms. Bruni is, well, the marrying kind. She has said that monogamy “bores her terribly.” Love, she says, lasts a long time, but (I’ll leave it in French, the best language, somehow, for such thoughts) “le désir brûlant, deux à trois semaines. Après ça, il peut toujours renaître de ses cendres mais quand même: une fois que le désir est appliqué, satisfait, comblé, il se transforme.”

Vive la France!