Marielle de Sarnez’s name no longer appears on François Bayrou’s phone screen. To tell the truth, he had never appeared there. When the handset rang, the eyes of the curious saw only an indicator and a series of nine digits. What was the use of registering them in a repertoire since they were and remain etched in his memory: the Béarnais could recite his number by heart. “We called each other ten times a day,” he said, barely seconds after inviting us into his office on rue de Constantine, at the headquarters of the High Commission for Planning. Those who have rubbed shoulders with them lean more towards fifteen, or twenty, at the very least. These two were able to hang up on each other, to remember to yell at each other for having hung up on each other, to start over, start over again, to be sure not to have forgotten anything in their lengthy exchanges. A children’s game. Magnets. Even today, when François Bayrou hangs up on an important call, his fingers sometimes mechanically dial the number of his alter ego. She was always the first to know. Everything, all the time. He confides, slowly: “It’s an agreement like there is none in politics. Nowhere. Undeterred. Indestructible. It’s a very beautiful story.” Exceptional, dare we even.
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It was here, at Le Plan, that the historics of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) gathered around their boss at nightfall on January 13, 2021. The Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau had cut his dinner short with the head of the Paca region Renaud Muselier to join Jacqueline Gourault, Minister of Territorial Cohesion, Jean-Louis Bourlanges, Patrick Mignola and Jean-Paul Mattei in the mansion of the 7th arrondissement… That evening, Marielle de Sarnez had succumbed to fulminant leukemia contracted six months earlier. Everyone then experiences a feeling of gaping emptiness. “I can’t believe she’s not here,” repeats François Bayrou tirelessly, while responding to dozens of calls from politicians wishing to offer their condolences. Among all these testimonials of support, he receives a text message from Jean-François Copé which particularly moves him: “You had a force of two that we, at the UMP, did not have of a thousand.”
It needed strength. The UDF, the conquest of the town hall of Pau, the passage of Bayrou to the Ministry of Education, the three presidential campaigns, the MoDem, the rallying to Emmanuel Macron in 2017… Marielle de Sarnez was of all the tests and all Deceptions. More than a duo, the heirs of Giscard and Lecanuet have formed a structure dedicated to saving their political family and leading the mayor of Pau to the Elysée. “Marielle was entirely, completely, at the service of this adventure born with François”, supports one of their mutual friends. Even more when the centrist party knows, after 2007 and 2012, a crossing of the desert which saw many of its “Bedouins” – according to Bayrou – flee the caravan in search of a more attractive political future elsewhere. When funds and men run out, when the pots organized at 133 – the headquarters of the Modem rue de l’Université – become more rare and modest, there is always an unfailing water carrier.
“The fool of the two was me”
“The fool of the two was me,” he said with a broad smile, plunging his eyes into yours for a long time. Enough for you to understand who was driving the tandem, where the audacity lay. He, the theoretician, the ideologue; she, the tactician, the intractable even authoritarian organizer. “They were complementary: she reasoned with François when he went too far, she was often the one who tempered him”, summarizes the former minister and lifelong friend Jacqueline Gourault, now Sage of the Constitutional Council. The small hands of the party still have the memory of the doors slamming, of chilling confrontations in full view, which they sometimes simulated to provoke the reactions of their lieutenants. It is she who, at the beginning of 2017, plays a key role in the alliance between the young candidate Macron and the herald of the center, crumpled to see an inexperienced investment banker walking on the flowerbeds he has been shaping for so many years. ‘years. “And if it was Macron our candidate and we faded?” she suggests the day after Christmas to a Marc Fesneau on vacation, asked to return to Fissa the capital to draw the outlines of this win-win agreement.
How many times have we heard their friends, their allies, their adversaries squealing “it’s all Marielle’s fault”. Rightly, wrongly, whatever, Sarnez assumed his role as a shield reluctantly, held out the stick to appear as the evil genius of the mayor of Pau: “She was brave but not a suicide bomber like François can be”, smiled one of their intimates. In February 2002, all that the country knows of chiraquiens meets in Toulouse for a great gathering of the Union in motion, the presidential stable which will become the UMP. The day before, Marielle de Sarnez, helped by Jacqueline Gourault, implores François Bayrou not to go there: their leader must refuse to participate in this great alliance of the right and the center, there are only whistles and boos to reap. In the early morning, the one who usually never turns off her mobile phone sees a dozen missed calls. Bayrou went to parasitize the meeting, hammering out his message of independence and being jeered at with a smile on his face. He is convinced of it: she was mad with joy.
Now, from his office, François Bayrou no longer yells “Where is Marielle? Has anyone seen Marielle?” ad infinitum until a good soul wants to answer him. He no longer sits at the table in the restaurants where they used to. The Morbihannese political returns from the MoDem to Guidel are no longer quite the same; during the 2021 edition, a few months after the death of Marielle de Sarnez, grief kept the Pater Pau in his hotel room for part of the weekend. “She left behind an empty space, but no one wanted to fill it. You would have to be very indecent, not have any modesty, to consider replacing her”, assures the Minister of Agriculture and number two of the Modem Marc Fesneau.
From now on, François Bayrou bears sole responsibility for leading his party, its history, its filiation: standing in the heart of the Saint-Sulpice church, in front of Emmanuel Macron and the French political class represented, he is the only one, in addition to the children of Marielle de Sarnez, to pay homage. The last to leave, as the head of the family. “What touched me and made me angry was the beauty of the testimonials that were given to her. No one said that Marielle was great, if people had told her even a tenth of these testimonies during his lifetime, it would have done him a lot of good”, confides, moved, the deputy for Paris Maud Gatel, faithful among the faithful of Marielle de Sarnez, whose indictment in the case of the parliamentary assistants has it, affirms she, consumed. This winter’s trial will undoubtedly reopen the wounds. “It is not important, it is capital”, continues the elected official.
François Bayrou also has red, misty eyes. As often for two years now. But no photo of Marielle de Sarnez sits in this office: the Christian Democrats of the MoDem speak of presence. Of Eternity. “I have always felt that death was another way of being alive. I do not believe that the dead are dead, I continue with them the interrupted dialogues… There is no before and after Marielle , because she’s not gone. So yes, we don’t argue less these days, it’s true, but this girl is alive. This story is alive.” A life and death pair. Maybe even more.