Nicolas Sarkozy fortunately regained his "personal courtesy" when he arrived at the court. "When I came this afternoon," said the former French president on Wednesday, March 19, "I had such anger inside me that I had to take a little break." But he wasn't alone. His wife, Carla Bruni, was there, as well as his press attaché, two representatives of a communications company and his bodyguard. The only person missing was his chief of staff, Michel Gaudin, whose ears must have been ringing on Monday, given how often he was quoted at the trial of the suspected Libyan financing of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.

The proceedings were almost over, and the court had summoned the defendants for any subsidiary questions, to listen to their final statements, and to ask them politely if they felt they had been sufficiently heard during the trial. Unsurprisingly, they all stressed that they were innocent, and, more surprisingly, were confident that they had convinced the court of this.

The former president was of course the star of the show. "I've been carrying the weight of this infamy on my shoulders for 13 years now," he said, making his argument in three points, as usual (his friend Brice Hortefeux, for his part, announced five and actually made six). "I have the impression that we started from the premise that Nicolas Sarkozy was guilty and that we had to aggregate disparate elements," Sarkozy said first. Second point: "I have the impression that, for the prosecution, it was what I was, or more precisely what I represented, that was targeted. That through me it was a rotten political class that had to be punished."

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