The Big Secret

Chapters and translators:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3 (Michel Eytan)

Chapter 4 (Francoise R. Corey)

Chapter 5 (Jennifer FitzGerald)

Chapter 6 (Jonathan Wallace)

Chapter 7

Chapter 8 (E. Dean Detrich)

Chapter 9 (Kris Shapar)

Chapter 10 (Jean-Michel Prima)

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13 (Andrea Crain)

Because of the sensitive political nature of this work, not everyone who helped translate Le Grand Secret into English wished to be listed here. Above are the names of those who chose to be identified. However, everyone who volunteered deserves thanks for donating their time and making this important work available to a wider audience.

Andrea Crain, in particular, has spent endless hours coordinating this effort and ensuring the high quality of the final translation. Thanks, Andrea, for all your work.

-Declan McCullagh, April 7, 1996

Chapter 2

"What shall I say to Danièle?" The President's response cut like a knife: "Nothing"

"Who should I warn? Who can help me in your family circle?"

"Nobody." It was theatre, it was tragedy. I found myself very alone. I wondered if I was right to be there. Wisely, I shared my doubts with Marie Claire Papegay. "If something important happened, should I warn Danièle?"

The President's secretary was definite "If he does not want you to, you should say absolutely nothing to anyone."

I was caught in a trap and plunged into a lie from which I would only escape 15 years later. The lie covered everything, the doctors lied from the time we finished by announcing to our patient that his chances of survival were 5 years, while the prognosis varied from three years to three months if his body did not respond to the treatment. The patient had also decided to lie, first to himself, which is quite human, and then to others from the time he had told me in December, to the time when I was to prepare the second bulletin concerning his health:

"Whatever happens, you must reveal nothing. It is a state secret." And he added, so that things would be absolutely clear between us: "You are bound by this secret."

My concerns did not last, which in retrospect, would seem to be astonishing. All my energy was taken up with his care. We needed to fight the illness and rescue him from it. I had the feeling of being his protector, someone he needed in adversity. I never thought of slipping away. However I took on a role for which I had not been prepared, one for which I had to improvise calmly and rationally.

I became relaxed, a bit of a dilettante, and indifferent, even mocking, about the intrigues of the Élysée Palace and its courtiers. I played the fool, accepting the idea that no-one took me seriously. People would whisper behind my back. I was told that Andre Rousselet had said with his biting humour "Who would like to be looked after by someone who looks like a 19th century London hansom cab coach driver?" According to my detractors, my presence around the President owed more to our friendship than to my professional qualities. What did it matter that I owed no-one anything apart from the President: to him I was faithful!

I discovered a capacity for secrecy at home in order to say nothing to my wife and children. And nerves of steel to feign ignorance in spite of the questioning which came from all quarters. I would often adopt an attitude that made people think that I was not really the person they thought.

A childhood friend, a doctor and supporter of Mitterrand called me at the beginning of 1982. The question floored me.

"The President has said that he would hide nothing concerning his health. If he had something serious, would you tell?"

I replied: "Obviously."

Luckily, this conversation took place on the telephone, because face to face with my friend, looking him in the eye, I would not have been able to lie so well. Another time, Laurent Fabius, at the time Prime Minister, asked to see me at his office, where he confided that according to one of his friends, a cancer specialist, the President had cancer. He awaited my opinion, perhaps my confidences. It was an uncomfortable situation. I put on an air of astonishment and quickly changed the subject.

That was not the most difficult aspect. I regarded this rather ungratifying role of making things up as a duty. It was more difficult to avoid arousing suspicions by my attentions, apparently unjustified, towards the President, or by appearing overzealous. If I left one of the secretaries a medication which she would have to give to the President at a precise hour, and if she forgot the task, I could not show my anger. Either she would not have understood or she would have been alarmed.

Eleven years later I revealed the secret to Hubert Vedrine, secretary general of Élysée. He collapsed into an armchair and exclaimed "You are joking. That you were able to sustain this role for so long!" It was the best compliment I received in 14 years at Élysée.

This degree of deceit was very wearing. It could also take on elements of farce. Like when François Mitterrand began to explain his pain and difficulties in walking as being due to a tennis injury. Afterwards, one of his advisors had leaked to journalists that golf was actually responsible for his physical problems. If the President had not revealed the true cause, explained this person, it was because of golf's image with public opinion. As. he was elected by the Left, it was impossible to explain his participation in a sport of the upper classes. He explained to me "Golf is not accepted. In the eyes of the French, it remains an elitist sport. Don't forget, after all that I am a socialist President."

Medical reality was more mundane. Professor Steg and I established a protocol to institute the means of treatment, always knowing that the medication prescribed had dangerous side effects: 30% of patients on the treatment died in the two first years of cardiovascular failure. It was therefore necessary to combine the hormone therapy with anticoagulants and to constantly monitor the patient for any sign of internal or external hemorrhage, or an embolus. Moreover, the presence of boney secondaries increased the risk of fractures.

I arrived every morning at the rue de Bievre at 7.30. The President was still in bed. On the first day he had recovered a bit of his liveliness after the initial shock. His sense of humour had almost returned, not without a certain perversity. He amused himself by letting his Labrador prevent me from approaching him. The game consisted of making me stay quite still until he let the dog out of the room. This ritual would last for the duration of his intravenous treatment, which is to say, daily for 2 weeks and then every other day up to the end of February, 1992. At these times I often think of Danièle who could arrive at any moment asking me what I was doing . . . Later, I would tell her that I was treating rheumatism.

I was still haunted by uncertainty. What if the three eminent professors who had given their opinion had been wrong? What if the examinations and tests had been badly carried out? And what if the results had been wrong?. Were we not in the middle of shooting ourselves in the foot?

I therefore decided to have the tests carried out the Val-de-Grace and checked by a private laboratory, without saying that the blood had come from the President. I invented a name: Carpentier, Xavier Carpentier, which would become the code name used by Professor Steg and me for talking over the phone. The reply arrived from the laboratory: there was no doubt. The diagnosis was confirmed. At no time did the President help me with my medical bulletins. He did not even suggest nor allow for us to agree upon our statements. In the face of the medical media, which had been alerted by the revelations of Paris Match, it would have been convenient to provide coherent explanations. The relations with his colleagues and the security services were treated with the same indifference. As I would be the only one to know what to do in the case of an incident, the conflict with authority was as foreseeable as it was inevitable. It would have been so simple to outline to his aides de camp: "It is Gubler who decides if something happens," or to reformulate and note in such a way, it would have simplified things for me. This refusal to clarify the situation made the position of Jean Glavany, the son of a soldier and attached to the institution, difficult. He gave way on certain things but remained mistrustful of those who were neither politicians nor soldiers.

In 1982 we were to leave by helicopter for Saint Jean-d'Acre in Israel. I asked to travel in the presidential helicopter. The aide de camp, Colonel Philip Mercier, one of those who never took me seriously, opposed it. "You will be in the second helicopter, that's an order!" I insisted, I resisted, I persisted. I wanted to punch the Colonel in the face and tell him: "Here, it is me who decides." But that would have given him a sign, an indication. It was preferable to bide my time. Finally, I made Philip Pierre Beregovoy intervene to sort matters out.

This camouflage of the truth produced comical situations. During a trip to Algiers in December 1981, I went every day to the President's room at 5 o'clock in the morning with my little suitcase. I would attach the intravenous set to a picture hanging on the wall, which threatened at every movement to fall on our heads. The same month, in the French Ambassador's room in London, I actually attached the system to a coat hanger. After all, I could not hammer a nail into the wall. These scenes made the President laugh, partly because he liked seeing me tackling these difficulties, and partly because he realised that the treatment was having beneficial effects. His humour had returned.

We knew that perhaps one day the foreign secret services would become interested in François Mitterrand's health, if they could track down an indication of a hidden illness. Modern history is full of examples of espionage concerning medical matters. In the last years of Leonid Breznev's reign, he was always under the permanent surveillance of the CIA. The most ordinary action in every day life can, in effect, provide precious information.

The Soviet leader, out of vanity, had the habit of combing his hair. It was sufficient to collect several hairs left on a comb judicially placed in the toilets of an official building visited by the Soviet leader to obtain a bill of health from a laboratory, watch the evolution of his illness and know how he was being treated. With George Pompidou in 1974, the Americans reached a precise diagnosis by collecting urine samples.

There was no doubt that in 1981, the election of the socialist President which allowed the entry of communists into the government was worrying the Americans and intriguing the Soviets. The White House and the Kremlin needed to know if this man who was crossing the political landscape would be in place for a long time. It is fundamental to the job to learn of these matters. François Mitterrand was not indifferent to the espionage to which we were subject in certain countries. One evening, during one stage of an official trip to eastern Europe, while we were alone in his room, he indicated to me to stop talking, a finger to his mouth while nodding at the ceiling and floors, at the moment I was going to speak about his health. He presumed that we could be overheard. This sort of situation amused him even more when he told me, a smile on his lips, about his conversation with a cardinal in a communist country. He had said to the prelate: " I think that we can speak freely," and the other had replied: "Of course, Mr President," while all of the time indicating the contrary with his hands and head.

I therefore did not know if the KGB or the CIA knew of the situation, but all of the equipment that was used in the President's care would disappear; the needle, ampoules, the broken ends of the ampoules, the cotton wool, bandages; there was no trace of them ever being used. They were collected in a bag I kept in my briefcase until I returned to Paris, where they were burned. This was also how it was done for the duration of the trip. My suitcases were locked with the use of codes and it was obviously forbidden to open them. If, at a country's borders, the police began to seem a bit too curious, the Presidential bodyguards were called as reinforcements.

In the Soviet Union, one had to be particularly vigilant. I began to follow the President into toilets in order to flush the toilets and scrutinise combs and brushes. As I was mistrustful of his reactions, he did not know for a long time what medication I was giving him. I said to him: "If someone asks you have only to reply, 'These are Gubler's drugs and they are for my rheumatism.'"

This psycho-drama, as it well became, lasted until 1992, but it was not always at the same intensity. In the first years, I was always worried about complications which could emerge at any moment. And whether something might happen at a particularly bad time, when he was far away and alone, that is to say on an official visit. In 1982, François Mitterrand had a clot, a pulmonary embolus; no-one was to have been able to pay attention to it, and what it meant, even Mitterrand, so as not to worry him.

At 5.00 in the morning he rang from his room. We were in Hamburg for the European council. He reported chest pain when he breathed. "It is nothing," he said. I had to agree falsely. There was no question of contradicting him. A strong dose of heparin. It was a fantastic dose but on the subject of the risk of thrombosis, there is less danger of causing a type of haemophilia than of attempting nothing. My teachers had taught me: "A hemorrhage gets better, an embolus is fatal. So, gentlemen, don't hesitate!" The embolus was stopped. The President believed that he had been the victim of arthritic pain in his clavicle.

The necessary interventions were easy to carry out in a hospital, but much less so on a trip with only the approximation of a clinic as back up. You need to work quickly and well in order to seem reassuring. Checking his calves once, twice, three times a day, making him breathe in and out, cough, listening to his chest, keeping him smiling. I was not even able to count on the military doctors because they were unaware of the situation.

General Lavedant had as a task to prepare, with the aid of emergency doctors he had chosen, the necessary medical resources during presidential trips. Our discussions were at the same time secret and very detailed technically so as to make sure there was effective help when necessary.

When we went away, and above all in countries where the medical hospital infrastructure was poor, the general used to say to me "I am giving you a surgeon and an anaesthetist, but it is well understood that they are aware of nothing."

I took, in addition to my usual resuscitation pack, the necessary antidote and particularly some PPSB (a coagulant factor extracted from blood that is given to haemophiliacs (Factor VIII)), kept in a fridge and transported in a Thermos flask. I was haunted by the possibility of an attack. The slightest cut and the President risked losing all his blood. He often had nose bleeds. For six years he swallowed blue tablets and one red tablet. That's all. He knew he did not have the right to take any other medication without warning me. Always a handyman, I managed to break his tablets into quarters with a nail file in order to arrive at a dose compatible with his rhythm of life and the indispensable margin of safety. It was acrobatics.

"Medicine is my thing and politics is yours, each to his own," I would say sternly. He went along with it because he knew he was making progress. Every 3 months we would undertake blood tests. Jodelle Govin came to the Élysée Palace in the morning to take the sample and on the same day it was about 6.00 in the evening, told me the results by phone. I used to go and see the President in the evening between two meetings or ceremonies. Our discussions were short. "Well?" "It is fine. The treatment is effective. We will carry on." That is how it was for ten years from 1981 to 1991. Each time we were relieved that we had a further three month reprieve. Our bit of hope. One day Jean Glavany who had guessed that something was happening, took me to one side and asked: "Is it serious or not?" "Don't ask any questions", I replied, "he will finish his presidential term, so calm yourself."

Chapter 3

1982-1983: Years of the worst dangers for François Mitterrand. Two devaluations for the French Franc. The local elections lost. Thirty-one towns gone over to the Right. Assassination attempts. The opposition was getting impatient. Jacques Chirac pronounced in public his prediction: the Left would not stay in power for more than two years. Elections would be held before that long. These were unbelievable words from the mouth of a Presidential candidate at a time when there were no elections in sight. Undemocratic words, revealing the feverish restlessness haunting part of the opposition for whom François Mitterrand was an usurper, to be gotten rid of -- and fast. Nerves get fraught, the Left responded. Louis Mermaz accused the Parisian Mayor of using "a rebellious tone and creating a neo-poujadistic atmosphere". Jean-Pierre Chevenement said he was bothered by his "fetid breath".

On July 14th 1984, the President had been greeted by whistling and jeering at the lower end of the Champs Élysées. This racuous hostility did not seem spontaneous to some observers, who saw small groups of men organizing the rumpus. A former Gaullist Minister observed:"It had gone very far, much further than has been admitted. There was loud whistling, even among the Officers' Wives. I learned about it from the police." But that's not all that was revealed by this Gaullist, positioned at some distance from the Chirac circle. In Chirac's set, "some people are preparing for a coup d'etat" he said. Was he exagerating? Telling tall tales? The former Minister was categorical: "I know about it because they told me . . . and besides, Mitterrand knows all about it..."

At about the same time, Gaston Defferre, Home Secretary, admitted he was "struck by the hate displayed by the Right". "It's realy awful," he said. "It's like the extreme right-wingers before the war." Edmonde Charles-Roux, his wife, spoke of getting anonymous letters telling her she would soon become a widow. She gave some more examples of this "Civil Cold War". A Marseille daily published advertisements calling the former paratroopers to "take to the streets". A _Times_ journalist asked her whether it was true that "the faucets of the toilets built at the Grand Trianon in Versailles for the summit of the Seven are made of pure gold." As if, in certain circles, Mitterrand were Ceaucescu!

What an atmosphere! What folly! It has been forgotten. But it's not so long ago and the actors from this bad play are still around! The Left was said to suffer from an "Allende Complex", in reference to the Chilean President overthrown by an Army putsch in 1973, after strikes supported by the "forces of money" and the Americans. They are quite right to be scared. In 1984 during a demonstration against the Savary law on private schools, extreme right-wing youngsters were heard to chant, "Allende we have gotten you, Mitterrand we shall get you."

In this atmosphere, the rumors about the President's health were spreading. His most determined opponents tried to find in the President's supposed physical weakness a complement to his political decline, as well as a justification for their relentless desire to see him go.

A story, unknown till now, illustrates the state of mind in certain circles. In April 1983, Jean-Louis Bianco got a phone call from the French Press Agency (AFP) informing him of the crazy proposition they had just received. The Paris hospital internists had been on strike since March 22nd. The conflict, very tough, would continue for 6 weeks. Some of the strikers at the Necker hospital had called up the AFP to ask whether they would be ready to publish the "content of some very interesting medical files on Mitterrand" that they claimed to have in their possession. They believed it might be a means of putting the pressure on the government to get their demands accepted . . . The AFP, reserving their response, asked Bianco to clear up this matter. The president's general secretary did not talk about it to the latter, but called me up immediately.

He didn't understand. Was the President ill? Did he get treatment at Necker hospital? What was all this mystery about? What advice should he give to the AFP? I calmed him down. I would investigate. The Necker internists couldn't possibly have the President's medical file. I was the only person who had it. Prof. Steg and General Laverdant did not have any documents. As for the private laboratory that carried out the investigations, they only knew about Xavier Carpentier. The possible leak couldn't originate from them. Finally, I realized the misunderstanding, which I explain right away to Bianco: the Necker folder concerned another Mitterrand!

As François Mitterrand says himself, "this disease is a family one". His brother Philippe was to die from it, as had their father before him. The average prostate cancer, if diagnosed early on, is a slowly evolving tumour. Well cared for, it allows very long survival rates and often true healing. François Mitterrrand's cancer was not in this category, but as always in medicine, evey patient is a unique case. He had an unheard-of luck. The sick cells responded in his case exceptionally well to the medical treatment. To speak of a miracle would be an exageration, but it was truly exceptional. From the medical point of view, it was an outstanding phenomenon. Few doctors or surgeons have in their statistics a similar case, be they Americans or Europeans.

This exceptional resistance enabled François Mitterrand to play, as he likes to, with the people, not without perverting reality when it served his aims. Eleven years' hidden fight with his illness before the first operation. Eleven years' hide-and-seek with death. This deliberate forgetting would distort all understanding and lead later on, considering the medias' publicizing his state of health, to unduly alarm many patients suffering from the same malady who have identified with him and who now ask their doctor: "And what about me? What about my PSA [1]? Is it like his? What's the use of radiation-therapy? Does it merely palliate or does it cure?"

An interpretation that is doubtless not very scientific, but that has the merit of giving a logical explanation, is that the illness has two types, a local one and a global one. The therapies applied had allowed eradication of the diffuse type, representing 99.9 percent of the abnormal cells. We knew that sooner or later the remaining .1 percent would multiply locally, at the site where the bad cells were enclosed.

Statistically, we faced an unusual situation. In the human sphere too, since the man would reveal himself to be exceptional, faced with his destiny. When I entered the family in 1969, Danièle spoke to me about the anguishes of her husband: "He is an anxious fellow with night fits," she said, "but who refuses the least medicine. He is most obstinate, you'll see."

He has always had anxiety fits when flying, especially when flying long distances without stopovers. It's one of the reasons he very quickly preferred travelling with the Concorde ... When this manifested itself at night, my technique was as follows: we spoke, we rambled about any subject, for the longest possible time and then I got fed up and fished out a pill from my case, telling him: "Either you get back to your right mind on your own or you take this tranquillizer." If I saw that the crew started to notice his nervousness, I proposed that he take a shot of Valium, which put him to sleep within 30 seconds.

The very notion of anguish is deeply ingrained in our subconscious mind and most of us accept the presence of this fearsome partner. François Mitterrand denied it. Every physical pathological symptom must originate, according to him, from an organic cause and nothing else. The very same man, so often irrational, could not bear that emotions could disturb his balance. I nevertheless tried to quiet him by explaining that this had no reductive effect on his physical or mental capacities, that actors' stage-fright disappears as soon as they step on scene. If his aide de camp had give given him a message announcing the Soviets had committed the irreparable at the very instant that I helped him overcome his anguish, the latter would have immediately disappeared and he would have said in cold blood: "Gubler, get back to your seat. Colonel, put the lights on and get me some sheets of paper."

Every time he had an important speech to make (between the years 1981 and 1988 he spoke in public 1700 times), I had to be there in order to buck up his voice, which he lived in fear of losing. It was merely the unconscious emotional load, even if he denied it, that caused this minute trouble. I told him it was a lowered blood-pressure. In truth, and I never admitted it to him, the medical treatment was not quite unrelated to the changes in his voice, although he was in no risk of losing it. His brother Robert demanded once that an eminent ear, nose and throat specialist be called in for consultation. After careful examination, the latter told me discreetly: "It's not in the throat that there are goings on, but here" -- pointing to his head.

There were other side effects related to his treatment, of course. For instance, the visible increase in size of the mammary glands, discernible and hence bothersome. My watchfulness on this point was not an aesthetic matter. The reality of the President's illness was never allowed to appear openly.

Trying to get him to admit this obvious problem brought one up against a wall. In this field he wanted rational facts. On the other hand it was with the utmost seriousness that he told the story of the blue pill.

We were coming back from Tokyo, where the Prseident had attended the funeral of the emperor Hiro-Hito, in the DC8 of the Cotam. I was lying, as usual, on a small bench close to his bedroom when he awoke me at 2 am: "I had to get up," he explained, "and I dropped my pill-box. The contents got scattered. I have found everything except a blue pill." We started looking for it in his room, under his bed, in the grooves of the door. To create a diversion I walked up the gangway towards the cabin, since he quite rightly did not want the military air hostess to see him on his knees, looking for God knows what.

Having put his mind to rest, since we obviously had the necessary reserves, we decided to get back to bed. Around 7 am we met in the small dining room for a cup of tea before landing. The hostess brought in the tea-pot, toasts and a lump of butter that she put down beside the President. We chattered and suddenly Mitterrand broke into laughter, turned around the lump of butter and said: "Look, here is the blue one." The pill was planted in the butter! It was my turn to laugh, at the astonishment of the crew at such a joyful realization.

The irrationality of this episode seemed to him indisputable and for him there could be no logical answer. For me there was a simpler explanation: the pill must have fallen into the folds of his dressing-gown during the night and when he bent over the lump of butter, it planted itself in it. But this explanation did not suit him. The mysterious aspect of the story amused him, made him dream, and that's the way he used to tell it to his friends.

During his first 7-year term, François Mitterrrand travelled abroad 154 times: 60 official visits to 55 countries, 70 one-day journeys, 18 European council meetings, 6 summit meetings. At each of these, I was at his side. Remember, this should have been the task of the military MDs from the Val-de-Grace hospital.

My whole life changed. I had to give up my responsibilities in the clinic where I practiced as well as my private practice. Such a decision means retiring from professional life with the attendant monetary consequences. However the function of the MD in charge of the chief of the State is not a paid job. There is no contract. He does not even figure on the flowchart of the Presidency. I merely got, from the chief of the cabinet, a monthly envelope that was to cover my expenses and the purchase of medical items.

Since most of the staff at the Élysée Palace are paid by their original administrative organizations, I needed to find a Civil Service job. In 1983, Rene Teulade, president of the National Federation of French Mutualité, incorporated me into his cabinet, where I worked specifically on the problem of palliative care and help for the dying. In 1986, Georgina Dufoix, Minister of Health, nominated me Inspector General of Social Affairs. Four years later, Claude Evin put me in charge of the influential National Commission on Nomenclature, the organization that regulates medical and paramedical acts. I will be renewed in this job in 1994 by Simone Veil.

François Mitterrand was far from satisfied with this situation. He never liked the Civil Service much. He spoke of my job as a civil servant with an ironic smile, if not with disdain. He did not understand that I could reinvigorate myself at the ministry of Social Affairs, far away from the turmoil at the Élysée Palace. To him it was obvious that I did not do much work. He asked me many times: "So, what are you working on? . . . Oh, OK. It looks rather interesting . . ."

Anyway, there was no way I would speak about my activities, especially if for political or personal reasons he was in an aggressive mood. It was better to start up the conversation by telling some spicy anectodes about women in his entourage.

Since I am rather secretive by nature, my personal life was not really changed. On the other hand, the situation utterly changed my family life. I had to learn to live in constant fear. I remember once being in my car when my beeper flashed all four memorized numbers: home, cabinet, clinic, Élysée. Somebody was looking for me everywhere I could be found. This had never happened before. I stopped at a phone booth and called the President's Office; they transferred me to Jacques Attali: "Oh, Claude, happy to hear from you. My wife would like an appointment with Dr. X . . ." I still remember myself perspiring in the booth, swearing at Attali who obviously couldn't know the anguish I was feeling.

I cannot even remember the number of occasions when the President ordered his Secretary: "Ring up Gubler; I want to see him immediately." At these moments I was panic-stricken. I rushed over post haste, only to be told: "I would like you to go and see a friend of mine, she does not feel well." He fished out of his pocket a bit of paper folded in four and gave me the address of the person. Depending on the importance of the person and his intimacy with the President, the conversation ended with: "Let me know about it" pronounced in a commanding tone or with: "See you" in a neutral tone; or finally with a pat on the shoulder and a conspiratory smile.

Along these fourteen years I got many calls of this type. It was either for men or women friends or for Mazarine, whom I was deemed not to know or for her mother whom he sent me to see often. If I were to expostulate, on the occasion of one of these so-called urgent calls: "Can you imagine the anguish I felt after your call! I thought something had happened to you," he would have replied in a sarcastic tone: "What are you talking about? I do not understand; I have no illness."

This thoughtlessness became apparent in 1992, when he had to be operated on. When I reminded him of his true illness, he started. He seemed so surprised that he asked me to repeat it again. With the flow of time he had become convinced he was cured, that he had become normal again. That is, by the way, what Steg implicitly told him, insisting on the commonness of such an operation at his age. Yet the fellow was chronically ill.

The facts lead me to believe that he had by then truly concealed his illness. From 1981 to 1990, the local symptoms had developed slowly, just like for any other man of his age. He had to get up two or three times a night. Everyone with a prostate problem has this constraint, cancer or no cancer. The regular tests done by Steg comforted him with the thought that the illness went on, but without any additional risk. And the biological tests showed that everything was normal, at least the ones allowing appreciation for the dissemination and the evolution. It was only in 1992 that an operation became unavoidable.

The televised debate on the Maastricht treaty at the Sorbonne on September 3rd 1992, with Philippe Seguin and a sample of Frenchmen, took place in unheard-of conditions. We were unbelievably stressed. He had to stay the distance, whatever the cost. I was against this performance because of the by then truly frightful symptoms. At that time, he complained of a dozen disturbances a night. How could he stay during three hours, face to face with the cameras on the air?

I had gone to visit the place, to inspect the "bathroom." I had insisted on there being at least one pause for advertising, whereas in the past his media counsellors had demanded that his appearences on TV should not be interrupted. All went well, since the man was extraordinary. Action provokes human beings, especially men of power, to transcend their limitations.

And yet, at that time, he still thought he could use other means than surgery. It was the peasant mentality, suspicious of doctors and of medicine. When he was about to be operated on, he told me: "It's very well, you will be able to pass along the message, to reveal that I have some trouble with my prostate. In that way, truth will be known." But when I brought him the report on the operation that would be used to write up the press release, which said he had an adenocarcinoma, he turned red, he jumped up: "That's impossible!" Steg, who was standing by, could not believe what he heard. François Mitterrand was ready to admit he had had a cancer, provided he could add that he was cured. In his mind, the operation was not a stage of his illness but the end of it. Whence came the astonishment on hearing my explanations.

After the second operation, his behavior was different. Henceforth, he had to face up to his death, while before that he was not aware of it. He did not want it to be explained to him. He would no longer say: "I do not want to end up in a vegetative state." The day when one has to face up to death, one just shuts up. That is one of the reasons I was no longer at his side at the end of his life. It's classic, it's human, it's part of the game. When you are François Mitterrand you can no longer look into the face of someone to whom you have said everything, who has seen everything, who remembers everything, into a well which contains everything you have thrown down it. I have great respect for that.

Chapter 4

For a long time now, François Mitterrand had not been the same, and his illness was not the only reason for this transformation which affected his mood and his relationship with those around him. When they arrive at this level of power, no matter what their mental strength may be, all statesmen are subjected to such pressure that it is difficult for them to remain the same. Except for general De Gaulle who was already an historical figure when he entered the Élysée Palace, François Mitterrand's predecessors also felt the weight of the office. How is it possible to remain simple when one is constantly an object of curiosity and cameras record your slightest movement? Except for a professional actor such as Ronald Reagan, the mission is practically impossible.

Others change too. Close friends wonder if they can still address the newly elected person informally, good friends don't dare approach him anymore, his colleagues form around him a fawning court. Roger Hanin, attentive to gestures like all comedians, observed that "nobody affects him any longer."

Michel Joubert, a member of the first socialist government after he had been Georges Pompidou's main associate, observed the President with a particularly sharp eye. "The character has become outrageously cold, the extraordinary distance he puts between himself and the person with whom he is talking ; the impassability of the mask he put on his face, a permanent pause, his icy silence or, on the contrary, his monologues which have nothing to do with the conversation at hand, the way he has of never answering questions, of running away, of talking of other things. It is obvious that he has created another character."

He settled into seriousness, placing himself above the problems which assailed the country, impervious to everything. At the beginning of his first term, François Mitterrand received advice from Claude Marti who had shaped Michel Rocard's image. This public relations specialist set one goal: "help him get out of the Pantheon which he symbolically entered on the day he became president." In other words, stop being mummified in that role and, as Valery Giscard d'Estaing said, wishing he could have done it himself; "provoke affective communication." He was able to do it, first in 1988 at the time he was reelected and above all in 1994, when the French will be touched by his courage in facing illness. He was never more popular than at the time of his departure.

From 1983, his daily behavior evolved toward constant complaint, annoyance tinted with disparagement. The effects of his medical treatment were not entirely unrelated to the transformation of his temper. He started to complain about everything and everybody. According to him, the food at the Élysée Palace was the worst in Paris. When flying, either in the Glam DC8, the Airbus or the Concorde, he was never happy about what was served to him. His criticisms were so outrageous that one day Bernard Attali, CEO of Air France, the company responsible for the service on board the presidential flights, pointed out to him, smiling, that he really was too harsh -- in other words, that he really was too much.

He was in the habit of complaining about his collaborators, his secretariat, his ministers. All or almost all were "incompetents", or "imbeciles." He spared very few. Furthermore, he never missed an opportunity to strongly criticize his advisors in front of outsiders, who were extremely embarrassed to be present.

I was such a part of his landscape that the President did not even notice my presence anymore. I had become so transparent that he talked in front of me without any reserve. Examples of his cold anger are numerous. Of all the difficult situations I witnessed, there was one which left me with a sadder memory than the others and which deserves to be told.

Gilbert Mitterrand was to be absent for a few days, and left his Labrador retriever Sixtine in the custody of his father. However, the President was also leaving on an official trip overseas . Therefore, the dog was left in the care of the Élysée Palace staff. His flight had hardly taken off when the President received a fax informing him that Sixtine had run away and disappeared. When we returned to Paris, I went, as usual, to greet the President on the steps of the Élysée Palace and asked him if he still needed me. This is when I witnessed an incredible scene. Hubert Vedrine, who had come to meet the Head of State, was reprimanded in no uncertain terms: "This house is not looked after. It is filled with incompetent people. It is inexcusable that this dog was not watched . . . " He went on and on.

Poor Hubert Vedrine mumbled an explanation: the animal run had away through the gate on the Rue de l'Élysée, often left open for cars to enter. How could anyone have prevented it? It was useless: François Mitterrand was beside himself. After an absence of several days, it was not state business that preoccupied the President, but what had happened to his son's dog.

Of course, the guards at the palace had been mobilized. Patrols had been sent into the neighborhood streets, the police had been alerted, notices had been posted. Two months later, Sixtine was found. A nice lady brought her back. But for several weeks, the Élysée Palace went though a collective obsession which spared nobody. One morning I found myself getting out of my car under a downpour to go verify that a Labrador retriever who was roaming in the Tuileries gardens was not Sixtine.

Fortunately, his temper was not always that bad. At one stop on a long trip, the President called me one evening to show me something. It was the pillows on his bed. "Look at them, touch them, are they not perfect? This is exactly what I have been looking for a long time." He looked like a child amazed by an unexpected gift. He wanted me to measure the pillows and inquire about their fabrication in order to have them duplicated in Paris. Finally, to simplify the problem, I stole one pillow which I slid into the presidential luggage. The sample was given to the Élysée Palace linen keeper, who had several duplicate pillows made. François Mitterrand never traveled without them.

In the same way, at the residence of the French Ambassador in Bonn, the President became enthralled by an armchair. He found it perfectly adapted to his form, comfortable, elegant. In short, we had to find its dimensions to have a copy made. This time, I really could not steal the armchair! I resorted to photography. Back in Paris, he never talked to me about it and, as I was not going to mention it, the photos of the armchair stayed in the bottom of a drawer.

There is, in the fairy tales and legends of our youth, a story which illustrates the complexity and ambiguity of my relationship with the President. Ra, the Sun God, falls in love with a beautiful woman. During the night they spend together, Ra reveals his true identity. In the morning he orders her "to run away quickly and never come again because I told you who I was and I will never forgive you this . . ." François Mitterrand was not the god Ra, but I knew so many things about him that in the end he could not look at me anymore. "I cannot be at the mercy of someone else," he thought. "It is not possible. I, and only I, must be in charge!." It was total conceit, but that's the way it was.

To the end, he had the attitude of a man who commands, who manipulates, who seduces. And each time his power of seduction had gone too far, or had targeted people too aware of it, they were rejected. Like Ra, he told them too much, he left himself vulnerable, he had given himself to them. To stay at his side and keep one's distance, one could neither see into this man's secrets, nor know his true nature. I was able to stay around him so long because I never let him think that I had something on him. Never.

Each time I witnessed a conversation where he raised health problems, giving enough information to suggest to his interlocutor that he might be talking about himself, I became invisible. I never wanted to enter into an affective relationship with him because it could have been nothing but destructive. I never displayed any warm feelings except in a very few instances, such as when he held my hand because he was suffering too much pain. He often reproached me for this lack of warmth: " You are a very angry and rigid man," he said. "A Protestant, a Lutheran minister." But he could count on me and he knew it. In fourteen years, I never asked him for anything. He never gave me a gift except once on December 31, 1988. He asked me to come to his library at the Élysée Palace to give me a copy of Don Quixote in a very rare, illustrated edition.

Each time he saw his friend Franceschi, who was dying of pancreatic cancer, he came back unsettled: "I don't want to finish like this with, tubes and things . . . Promise you will spare me this." I answered: "I'll do it if we reach that point one day," knowing full well that my word was one thing and that dealing with such a situation was another one.

In the course of my professional life, this request had been made many times of me. For only one woman did I do what she asked. We were bound by a pact which was respected because of exceptional circumstances. This is not the place to argue about what one should or should not do, what is good and what is not, that is to say grant, or give a patient the means to terminate, his life. Today, when methods for controlling pain have advanced considerably, we often mistake the duty to end suffering with the fact of ending a life.

François Mitterrand was among those who asked me to help them die should they find themselves in this situation. But if, on the one hand everybody refuses suffering and degradation, on the other hand everybody wants to go on living. Even with the most alert people, the most mentally strong, as the hour approaches, the request for a dignified death creeps in.

What we think to be true at one point in our life does not hold in the face of illness. François Mitterrand followed the same road. If, in 1981, someone had told him that one day someone would do this, he would have shouted that he would never allow it. And yet, since then, he had accepted it. Few clear-headed men can refuse a substitute which would allow them to live decently.

François Mitterrand was often mocked for his attraction to cemeteries. Indeed, he made numerous visits to these places devoted to introspection and memories. On May 21, 1981 at the Pantheon, his first gesture had been to put flowers on the tombs of several famous Frenchmen (Jean Moulin, Jean Jaures, Victor Schoelcher) who had served the country well. On the same day, he had asked Jacques Attali to do the same on Leon Blum's tomb at Jouy-en-Josas. The day before, the President had gone to the Montparnasse cemetery where his friend Georges Dayan was buried. Very often , the purpose of his trips to the provinces was to honor deceased friends.

The Head of State attended many funerals and often visited his dying friends in their home or at the hospital. There was no hierarchy to his compassion. He paid visits to a former minister as well as the owner of the "Vieux Morvan" in Chateau-Chinon. He even visited a fellow prison camp survivor like Bernard Finifter with whom he spent many hours during the winter of 1981 and of whom he asked many questions. Finifter was dying; Mitterrand was frightened. The story of General Olivier illustrates very well his strange interest in things related to the last moments of a life.

Olivier managed the Villacoublay golf course where the President used to play often. He was a simple man and François Mitterrand liked his way of speaking his mind. For example, he did not hesitate to tell the President that his selection of Edith Cresson as prime minister "was not the best thing he ever did." In 1991, General Olivier was diagnosed with a cancer which weakened him quickly. The Head of State went to visit him at the Val-de-Grace hospital, made sure that he was quickly awarded the Legion of Honor and presented it himself. Despite his busy schedule, his official trips and his own fight against the same illness, he accompanied to the end, even to the cemetery, this soldier who had been nothing to him but an occasional social companion.

Such behavior always puzzled his entourage. His old friend Maurice Faure verifies that death was a theme which was always part of their conversations. Anne Lauvergeon, the Élysée Palace assistant general secretary, tried with the freshness of her youth to shorten the soliloquies of the old man who was at the end of his journey and who asked himself questions. Does knowledge prepare one better for death? Does someone who was powerful die differently from someone who was penniless? Where do we find the courage to die well? The Dialogues of the Carmelites come to mind, and we think about the novice on the scaffold who was such a model of calm while the Mother Superior screamed her anguish. Death erases status. This is not by chance if Jean Guitton, the 94 year old French writer and philosopher was visited by the President. He came to talk about the afterlife and to ask him his opinion as a believer. "The President now asked himself if believers faced death more peacefully, wrote Marie de Hennezel, psychologist at an alternative care center in a recent book (La Mort Intime, Robert Laffont Editor). "Is there a link between faith and serenity?"

François Mitterrand, who wrote the preface for that book said "We live in a world which is frightened by this question and which avoids it. Before us, some civilizations looked death in the face. For the community and for each of its members, they charted a course. They gave a richness and a sense of fulfilling one's destiny. Perhaps never had the comprehension of death been so poor as in this time of spiritual drought when men, in their rush to exist, seem to avoid mystery." And the President asks this nagging question: "How to die?"

Chapter 5

So Mitterrand had always loved going to the bedside of the dying. His approach resulted from an intellectual pursuit; he was fascinated, in a noble way, by death, the beyond, the passing over. All things that he did not understand. He was a man who wanted to know everything, explain everything, to reach universal knowledge through understanding. But this problem was beyond him. Does one see death arrive? Does it produce something? A trigger? Are we conscious until the very end or does nature protect us by permitting us to pass over without realizing it? Outside his concern for his friends, he wanted to comprehend, which does not mean he had a taste for things morbid. Curiously, the uncultured man within him faded away before his extreme sensitivity when he approached these problems.

He was not the only one to search for a way that allows us to arrive at the beyond. A well-known professor of medicine was of the same mind. This man had visited the Kurd writer and filmmaker Ylmaz Gunney, a favorite of Danièle Mitterrand, who was dying from cancer at the International Hospital of the University's Halls of Residence. He told him, "You know what's wrong with you, don't you? A man of your stature should be writing down what is going on in his head now, as he's dying." The nurse interrupted the professor and began to cry. Everyone panicked because the sick man hadn't known he was condemned. All the work of accompanying the dying had been tossed to the ground.

François Mitterrand had the same approach. One thinks of this difference, that a doctor, to have a sufficient knowledge of human beings, can dare to bluntly ask certain questions and that the other, as a humanist, would rather take a detour in order to try to understand without harming the individual. Everything is shading with François Mitterrand. He is a civilized man, pugnacious, but neither brutal nor, even less, violent. His vehemence is explained by his incisive tone, by the turn of phrase, rather than by his choice of words. One of the rare times he used a scathing tone was at Nevers when he declared in his funeral oration for Pierre Beregovoy that Beregovoy had been "delivered to the dogs", even though certain people think that he was ignorant about the moral distress of this man, closer as a servant than as a friend. He goes on to do the same for François de Grossouvre.

Around 7 pm on April 7, 1994, François Durand de Grossouvre, 76 years of age, shoots himself in the head in his office at Élysée. The padded doors having muffled the sound of the shot, his body isn't discovered until for over an hour. Dr. Claude Kalfon writes the death report. There is blood all the way up to the ceiling. The President, who was dining in his private chambers, is informed immediately by his private secretary. It is the first time in the history of the Republic that a colleague of the Chief of State kills himself in the presidential palace.

Emotion, consternation, interrogation. Shouldn't the body be transported to some place else? The question is asked in the panic that seizes certain minds. The response is evident-there are too many witnesses to be able to keep this secret. Moreover, this production, if it were to be discovered, could give birth to suspicions about the conditions surrounding the dramatic end to the President's friend. Therefore, the body will remain there and the public will make assumptions.

François de Grossouvre had been a close friend of the President since 1959. A strange man, this doctor had never practiced his profession because of his wealth. Around François Mitterrand, he had always held an ambiguous role. Counselor for Police Affairs and Special Services, emissary to Arab nations, official or unofficial, no one ever knew. He reveled in the secrecy. He had become a sort of "Minister of Private Life" as was written in the London Sunday Times. He was the provider of alibis, protector of hidden love affairs.

He occupied an apartment provided for him on 11, Quai Branly, in a building reserved for counselors of the President of the Republic. His neighbor downstairs was Anne Pingeot, mother of Mazarine, living there according to the wishes of the President. Officially, her apartment was for Laurence Sondet, a woman who was kept very busy at Élysée and friend of the Chief of State. However, she did not use it because she had her own apartment in Neuilly. Everyone closed their eyes to this situation, which remained unknown to the public. François de Grossouvre held property in Lusigny, in Allier, where the "Second Family" of the President came to spend their weekends and vacations.

When he killed himself, the enigmatic Grossouvre, evidently worried at Landru, no longer carried out his duties at Élysée. He was still Chairman of Presidential Campaigns, an honorary position to which he gave inordinate importance (and which Jacques Chirac has since eliminated). However, he kept all the benefits of his previous position: office, secretary, car, apartment, bodyguard. François Mitterrand never fires those who have disappointed him nor those whom he no longer needs. He saves his victims from disgrace by making them wait for an explanation that will never come, he isolates them in their idleness.

Grossouvre was unhappy to see himself rejected by the President. He waited patiently, sometimes for hours, he who had been one of the rare people at the beginning of first 7-year term in office to be able to enter the Chief of State's office at any time, without calling ahead, after having discretely knocked twice upon the door. This life, in which he pretended to still be useful to he whom he so admired, undoubtedly became unbearable for him. He made venomous remarks against the corrupt entourage, with a preference, in his choice of the people he spoke to, for journalists who hated the President. He was not physically inside the circle, he confessed it. He was a castoff, and François Mitterrand had turned away from him.

François de Grossouvre's suicide was a big shock for the President. This death so close to him, as a word of goodbye, was perceived as a provocation. For a long time, he looked for a logical, rational, medical explanation for this act, an explanation so clear, so evident, that all his intervention, even minimal, would have been useless. He questioned me about the effects of senility or Alzheimer's disease, or about the importance of the brutal decline in the sexuality of men. Occasionally, he made the most of the presence of Dr. Kalfon to compare our opinions on this subject, reminding us of François de Grossouvre's final remarks. "So," he concluded, "Don't you think he exhibited all the symptoms?"

He absolutely needed an answer involving strictly physiological pathology. François Mitterrand did not want to speak about his problems with the loneliness and estrangement from which Grossouvre suffered. Perhaps he didn't dare, nonethless Kalfon and I felt that he was thinking about it. He could not understand that someone from whom he had removed his affection and interest could have killed himself. If, at this time, Claude Kalfon had known what was waiting for him -- we will see later -- perhaps he would have responded otherwise to the interrogations of a President whose irresistible seduction continued to do its damage.

One day, when the Chief of State was in a glum mood and feeling sorry for himself, I told him, "As long as you have the desire to seduce, you have the desire to live. But you so terribly want to seduce. Naturally, I'm not just talking about seducing women, but about the desire to enchant someone else, everyone else. This pleasure hasn't left you." He let a few moments of silence pass and responded simply, "I think you're right, yes, of course," and our walk continued more peacefully. Each of us spins a web in which our more or less willing prey are captured. When there is a great seducer who has an almost absolute power, the web becomes immense, too full, and we end up removing those who become too heavy or cumbersome for our own protection.

François Mitterrand does not like to be in a situation that he does not control. He is a man always on his guard. I saw him, when he was sleeping, wake with a start and make a movement with his arms as if to protect himself from an imaginary attack. Perhaps this trait explains the existence of this praetorian guard which surrounds him in order to refuse access to his door. In contrast to this, Jacques Chirac, with his extraordinary vitality and his sense about other people, better reveals the petty bureaucratic ways taken by his predecessor, putting up more walls of protection around his person, demanding at the same time that they be as discrete as possible in order not to disclose this weakness.

In Kyoto, we visited the house of a Shogun, a certain detail of which had fascinated the President. It was the wooden floor of the nightingales. All around the central chamber, that of the lord, the wooden floor is made up of little moving slats which activate, if touched lightly, air to escape and produce a bird call. Not even a cat can walk on this floor without setting off this subtle alarm. How can one protect himself without resorting to force? To François Mitterrand, it was a wonderful thing! He was overcome by the subtlety of the designers of this work of art. That which is invisible to the eyes of everyone, is known by one person alone, that is the true power!

Chapter 6

Starting in 1983, this strange life began to cruise along at an incredible speed. The Head of State's illness seemed under control. Until 1991, there was no recurrence. There was no growth of the cancer, and no secondary effects of the treatment. Professor Steg saw his patient twice a year. We didn't relax our vigilance. The President felt well. He moved about a lot. The Élysée routine. We lived through dramatic and, more rarely, joyful episodes.

In 1982, in Niger, while visiting a zoo, François Mitterrand fell ill, overcome by the heat. A glass of water with a dose of Coramine-glucose and everything was back to normal. Except for the journalists covering the trip, to whom I explained what happened. The Reuter's correspondent put in doubt the insignificance of the incident, for which he was reproached by the French Press Agency reporter. The English and French reporters almost came to blows, and it was nearly necessary to separate them. The incident illustrates the climate of suspicion that already surrounded the President's health. In fact, the Niamey incident had nothing to do with the illness from which he suffered in secret.

During an official visit to Switzerland in March 1983, the President of the Swiss Confederation offered each of us a Bernese sheepdog. As it happened, we had just lost our dog and he had heard about it. During Pentecost, I went to pick up the two dogs at Berne, then returned to Cluny for the famous ascension of Solutre Rock. Which dog to choose? Danièle decided: the first one to jump out of my car would belong to the Mitterrands. We called him Upsilon, and mine Larix. Both died seven years later of the same illness.

Bogota in 1985. Françoise Sagan, personally invited by the President on this South American trip, was found in a coma (misuse of medication, plus the altitude, plus exhaustion). At the same time, a crew member from the President's plane, an Air France mechanic, was stabbed in a bad part of town. The writer was hospitalized and placed on life support while awaiting evacuation to France. We discovered that, unlike the officials with us, the President's guests are not covered by insurance. We had the choice of either summoning a private air ambulance or calling the Mystere 50 medical plane standing by at Villacoublay; we picked the latter because it was less expensive. As for the wounded mechanic, whose condition was not as serious, he returned to Paris in the press plane.

The Presidential trips brought about some amusing situations, at the same time that they revealed the manners of a bygone age. For example, Bangladesh, February 1990. Upon arriving in Dacca, I had declined an invitation to the official lunch, preferring to have a quick bite alone. I went down to the kitchen of the palace where we were staying and was eating a stand-up meal when a Bengali officer entered, asking for the person in charge of monitoring the plates served to the French President. Seeing me with a plate in hand and spotting the badge on the lapel of my vest, he asked, "Are you the taster?" Amused by the misunderstanding and not wishing to enter into long explanations, I answered in the affirmative. The officer left, reassured. Thus, in Bangladesh, everyone thought that François Mitterrand, fearing poison, only ate after his doctor . . .

In 1987, the Mitterrand family endured a dramatic moment. On July 21, Gilbert and his two daughters, Pascale (nine years old) and Justine (six), were injured in an accident on a little road in Catalonia, near Gerona. The Spanish driver of the car which hit Gilbert's was killed instantly. The President's son and his granddaughter Pascale had multiple fractures and bruises, but their lives were not in danger. Justine, however, was in grave condition; a trauma to the head and a fracture at the base of the skull. Marie-Claire Papegay informed the grandparents, who were vacationing at Latche. The President asked that I leave immediately for Gerona, and placed at my disposition a plane which awaited me, engines running, at the Villacoublay airfield. I left with a surgeon and anesthesiologist whom I had picked up quickly from the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital.

At the Alvarez de Castro hospital in Gerona, François and Danièle Mitterrand, who had arrived on the President's Mystere 50, joined us. Justine had been operated upon, with excellent results. The president, at the bedside of the little girl with the bandaged head, was overwhelmed. He was sure she would die. He himself had escaped death twice in car accidents. In 1966, between Jarnac and and La Rochelle, and in 1976, in Paris, leaving the Radio House after an "A Armes Egales" broadcast which pitted him against Jean-Pierre Fourcade.

It was necessary to make a decision: leave Justine in Spain with the fear that her condition would worsen, and possibly that she would die; or bring her home, with the risk that she would die during the voyage. Whichever way, I would have been in the wrong if a disaster happened. In the late afternoon, I decided to take everybody back to Paris in two planes, with complete life support and a specialized crew. François Mitterrand had nothing to say. For him, it was normal; I didn't have the right to make a mistake. But this time, I had made the decision. I took his place and the roles were reversed.

Danièle and the faithful Christine Gouze-Raynal stayed ten days at Justine's bedside at the Pitie-Salpetriere; she was in no further danger, and the President installed himself with the rest of his family in the Rambouillet chateau. Danièle left just once to pass by her office at the Élysée, where her employees prepared to send a ton of medicine, food and blankets to the flood victims in Chile.

After having recovered from severe physical and psychological fatigue, Danièle took up her role at the head of her France-Liberty Foundation. She put an incredible energy into it, shaking the charitable world out of its usual routines, provoking diplomatic incidents which embarrassed her husband. She profited from her extensive contacts to obtain support and loans or simply to mobilize and enroll influential or well-placed friends. I was one of them. I began by helping the library of the Phnom Penh medical school which she wanted to rebuild at the request of the Cambodians. We approached French publishers to collect basic medical works, ancient or recent. Tons of books were sent to Cambodia by truck via Thailand. Then there were the cases of Argentine children who had disappeared or been separated and who were sought by their families. Genetic identification was a modern approach, but expensive. The genetic database maintained by the National Blood Transfusion Center furnished the information which was sent to Argentina.

Then there was technological aid for the rehabilitation of handicapped Chinese people, following the visit to France of Deng Xiao-Ping's son, himself a paraplegic; shipment of material to the Sahraouis; and taking charge of children in need of transplants, coming from South Africa, South America, and Eastern countries.

Each time, we had to battle to convince donors, public and private, to find money for us, which required all kinds of budgetary acrobatics. We frequently pushed the Ministry of Social Policy to contribute, though less than Danièle would have wished -- I had to try to moderate her demands on them. Because she was the wife of the President of the Republic, she had a tendency to believe that everything was owed her. Several times I had to remind her that France also has needy people and that there was a limit to the state funds we could obtain.

Though the Chief of State's security had been reorganized, his medical coverage had not been, and still had numerous gaps. Between two trips, I undertook to fix this in improving the Vega plan. I also took the opportunity to review the support which our health services were able to give foreign dignitaries residing in or traveling through France, if they became ill or suffered an accident. Up until then, the Quai d'Orsay only sent people to the American Hospital. I set myself up at the Foreign Relations Ministry to work on this project. In 1986, I was asked to leave by the mixed Socialist and Conservative government.

The new Conservative majority meant that there were some new faces in the President's field of action. For his doctor, it was a delicate situation. I no longer existed in a milieu which was amicable and cooperative by definition. The two camps were hostile to each other. The two entourages spied on each other and tried to hide their own secrets. In my domain, things seemed calm, but it was only in appearance, not reality. Those now in power were some of the same people who had started and spread evil rumors for many years. People's interest in me was not always innocent. The state secrets which I shared with my patient had never needed to be so carefully guarded.

The accomodating persona I had assumed for the last five years needed to be refined even further. It was necessary that I appear to be even more naive than before, so as not to excite the least suspicion. My presence should not cause any comment by those who were not used to me. I entered into good relations with the new team in power, of which certain members, like the warm Denis Baudouin, the Prime Minister's spokesman, were friendly to me. I was politically neutral, as everyone saw, and I soon became commonplace.

As for the President's health, I had to watch him even more closely. We didn't want any incidents, not even the slightest nosebleed. I was afraid that François Mitterrand himself would let slip some information. He enjoyed being provocative. He was capable of doing it as a joke. Listening to someone complaining about health problems, he might say, "What are you complaining about? Take a look at me!" I never left his side, and he amused himself at my expense. He introduced me to some of the new Ministers while insinuating that he had no idea what I was doing there, and that he wasn't worried about his health anyway.

"Don't hesitate to call him," he told them.

Happily, he was in rather satisfactory condition. My goal could be summarized by this prayer: "Lord, please don't let anything happen to him; let him reach the end of his term!" He would have won his bet concerning his illness; he would retire, and the troubles to follow could be dealt with calmly.

Each check-up was good and reassuring, but nevertheless certain symptoms worsened. In addition, I could never be sure of the President's sincerity. If he wanted to upset me -- which happened sometimes -- he would exaggerate his problems and pains. I had to ask his bodyguards if he got up frequently during the night, if he complained, if he ate or drank anything.

Since he was doing fairly well, he had less need of my services, and he did not seek solitary meetings with me at which I could speak freely to him. He was preoccupied with political problems caused by the sharing of power with the Conservatives. "Cabinet meetings are intellectually exhausting," he confided. "I have to be on my guard every moment." The word was that he might not run for re-election. He told me often that he would love to devote more time to his children and grandchildren.

Justine's accident led him to some philosophical reflections on life and death. But it didn't cause him to think about his own situation. He didn't see any relationship to his own mortality. François Mitterrand was always resourceful in difficult times. The events of the last two years -- the sharing of power, the Gerona accident -- caused an energetic reaction in him, but he remained silent about whether he would run in 1988.

The chance that he would live to complete another seven-year term was slight. As a result of reading all the available literature and chatting with Professor Steg, who supported me with unyielding energy, I almost had become a specialist in prostate cancer. The idea of the President getting re-elected could only make me anxious. It was difficult to stay objective. The President's retirement was synonymous with a return to peacefulness, while it would be hell to continue. If he had asked my advice, I would have advised him to give it up. Certainly his was a unique case, outside the norms, but the future was unknown. Steg believed that his having survived until 1988 was already remarkable. If the President had asked Steg's opinion, he would have responded that medically, he couldn't predict anything with certainty, but that the risks were very great. We both thought: "Please don't let him run again!"

The world probably still believes today that before asking the French people to renew their confidence in him, and in order to know if he was capable of running the country for another seven years, François Mitterrand consulted those who took care of him. Any CEO upon whom depended the economic future of hundreds of thousands of workers would have done so, if called upon at his age to stay in office for so much longer. He didn't. He never asked me anything. He never interrogated Steg. He persisted in the lie, protected by the twice-annual bulletins on his health. Nonetheless, this major rendezvous with his countrymen offered him an opportunity to reveal the closely guarded secret, to make a fresh and honest start, and to have at last the medical clarity he had wanted and which had been so badly mismanaged up until now.

He did not do it, perhaps, because he drew comfort and hope from the statistics on mortality which Steg had shown him pertaining to cancer of the prostate. It seemed that at least half of the victims survive for four or five years. After that, mortality is the same as the general population. Most frequently, one dies of something else. In 1988, he thought he was protected by the statistics. However, it was an illusion, because these evaluations never corresponded to his own type of cancer, for which the mean survival rate is three years. Neither Steg nor I brought this to his attention and we would not have done so for any patient: "Primum non nocere (First, do no harm)" was our motto. Starting in 1985, he considered himself cured and enjoyed asking Steg: "How much time is left, according to your statistics?"

When he ran for President of the Republic for the first time in 1965, François Mitterrand said of General DeGaulle: "A sixty-five year old man is in no condition to assume the responsibilities which he is seeking." He himself was forty-nine at the time. In 1988, when he decided, after much hesitation, to run again, he became the object of criticism pertaining to his age (he was seventy-one). He didn't get upset. "I know I'm strong enough to do it because I come from strong stock." In a book of interviews published in 1980 (Here and Now, with Guy Claisse) he had already been asked about this issue and had responded bluntly: "You only know what a man is worth at the end."

Chapter 7

François Mitterrand wanted everyone to believe that the regular publication of health advisories, in imitation of American methods, had a political virtue. He intended to demonstrate that he was open with regard to health, as with regard to his inheritance -- which none of his predecessors had been. It was said then, including in certain medical spheres where he wasn't liked, "Bravo, that's courageous." But this makes no sense. It was a fakery, a "good idea" revealed to be false with a rapidity that one would never have been able to imagine. This system desired by the President turned back against him; he recognized that before me: "What a mistake!" But he used it; the proof is explosive. I was only a pawn to be manipulated. Medicine had been caught in a trap.

What is openness? Does it mean to open all the files, permitting to everyone to verify the exactitude of the facts? In the domain of health, this is a delusion. Medicine is not an exact science -- the survival of François Mitterrand demonstrates that. These famous advisories enabled the press to cut loose or to be calmed at the will of the needs of a more or less partisan policy. The investigations engaged in by some were not always totally without accuracy, as if they perceived confusedly that something escaped them. But if the totality of medical documents (even those of December 1981) that enabled the production of biannual advisories had been turned over to commentators, they wouldn't have been able to deduce very much more: the access key to them was missing; it was hidden in the only examination results that had never been published, those of November 1981, which had revealed the metastasized cancer. One month later, the evident signs of the illness had disappeared, the patient's system having reacted marvelously.

The advisory of December 1981 was thus neither a lie nor a coverup, but incomplete. By playing on words, one could argue, since the rendezvous with public opinion on the medical level was biannual, that we were not required to mention whatever might develop between two publications. If the President had wanted it, the revelation of the illness should obviously have figured in the communiqué of the end of the year and, beginning in 1982, each advisory should have begun thus: the results of treatment followed by François Mitterrand for his prostate cancer are satisfactory, etc.

In light of this experience, it seems, taking account -- a latin idiosyncrasy -- of our concern for protection relative to privacy and of our ethics, that it would have been much simpler and more appropriate for the President of the Republic to speak of his health, for example, when he receives the press the day of the inaugural ceremony. If there is something to say in the interim, a communiqué could be published, signed by him, with an eventual reference to the consulting physicians or to the examinations carried out.

It is clear that medicine has been turned from the narrow path of its role to the profit of political interest. Whether the President is of the right or of the left is irrelevant, obviously. What happened during the summer of 1990 will confirm this deviance, this phagocytosis of medicine by political power.

In mid-June, I see the President in order to prepare the ritual advisory. To my great astonishment, he suggests revealing a part of the truth. "Look after it," he instructs me; it is his way of approaching problems, that is to say, the opposite of clarity. He whispers the idea. It is left to the person he's addressing to decode what he has in mind.

I return to see him a few days later, to ask him for some details, and he announces this: "It is possible that in August I will decide to leave. Under that hypothesis, you must prepare the terrain with regard to my health. If I withdraw, we will tell all, but only at that moment. I will telephone you."

I'm astounded! I am obviously perplexed regarding the meaning of this communiqué and the role that I am supposed to play. I compose two or three vague texts which I tear up; and finally I give the President a text in which I dwell on the state of clinical health and on some biological examinations -- a matter of attracting the attention of the media.

Openly, this communiqué gives one to understand that the President is very tired due to a cause yet undetermined, that he has need of rest and that examinations will follow. This new item would not fail to alert public opinion and to create an investigation which would receive its answer in August, with either the revelation of cancer and its consequence, resignation; or, all is normal and it is a question of a false alarm.

"This way, things will be more clear," he said to me. "Openness will be respected. I can not be accused of hiding something." So I have his green light. I turn over the communiqué to the spokesman of the Élysée, Hubert Védrine, who, after having read it, dashes to Jean-Louis Bianco, Presidential Secretary General, who in turn calls Michel Charasse to come and join them. They are beside themselves: "It's impossible to publish that. It's a bomb!" I explain my position: "The President asked it of me, I did it. All your objections -- it's not with me that you have to discuss them, but with him."

That was not the only time that I encountered this type of situation. François Mitterrand was happy with saying only a part of the truth without really lying. He asked me to write exact things, but at the moment that suited him and not at the time of the facts. Further, one perceived that one opposed him, having believed one served him well. He never allowed me to grant an interview after his first operation, although his press service asked it of me and Hubert Védrine insisted: "It has to be done even if he is against it." He protested when I went, in April, 1992, to participate in Patrick Sabatier's broadcast ("All on Page One"), at the request of his colleagues. "You ought to have asked authorization of me. It's up to me to decide if your participation is opportune."

Finally, Binaco, Védrine and Charasse blocked the health advisory, which was never published in the agreed-upon terms. Charasse seemed to be the most informed of the situation: "I know why all that is necessary," he said to me, enigmatically. "I am going to try to set things right." And he added with that flowery language for which he was known, "It's shit! Horrible shit!"

The President pursued me. He was unhappy. I was obliged to admit to him that his counsellors absolutely did not want this communiqué to appear. He shouted, "It's I who give the orders!" During the general disorder, I took the initiative to suppress a bothersome passage in the text approved by the President. The situation was ridiculous, but thus it was. I left included, however, the passage concerning the speed of accelerated sedimentation and the presence of hypoglycemia. This advisory could not altogether resemble the others.

I did not know how I was going to bounce back from the business. I was the prisoner of a contradiction: to say at the same time the truth -- he has a cancer synonymous with death -- and its opposite, since at that time, June 1990, he was in good health. I was going to give news the emotional charge of which was fantastic, while nothing in his state justified that he resign. At that moment, the French would doubtless have reacted favorably: "There is a man of courage and character. He is beseiged with cancer, he is going, it is well!" Later, they would have discovered that his health had nothing to do with his departure.

The advisory, the sentence about waiting for supplementary examinations cut out, was published on July 28, 1990, with a month of delay, and passed almost unnoticed, except by a few specialist journalists. In 1992, its terms would be evoked by the President himself, during a televised meeting, to demonstrate that two years before, physicians had identified something abnormal. Once again, he had let pass the opportunity to tell the whole truth.

I left on vacation, to my home at Cuges-les-Pins in the South, fearing the telephone call that would order me to leave everything. Nothing happened, except that the Gulf crisis invaded the news and that the Chief of State now never left center stage. Michel Charasse, of whom I had asked news, reassured me: "I've fixed up everything. Everything is OK. No worries."

What had happened? No one ever explained it to me. I only had suppositions. I have never wanted to be indiscreet. From the words of Charasse, I believed I understood that these fleeting intentions to resign had an origin in personal reasons. Fundamentally, what he had asked of me was a false order to stop work.

There was in François Mitterrand a disposition more marked than in some others to adapt means to ends. Decency would have wished that I know why I had been thusly maneuvered. Was it reasons of state or François Mitterrand's personal reasons that motivated him?

Given the words which I heard from the personal Secretariat or from the mouth of Charasse, the first explanation that came to my mind was the aftermath of the Péchiney affair. "It's getting tense," they said, with a disquieted air. Roger-Patrice Pelat, suspected of insider misbehavior -- hadn't he caused those around the President to profit from his information or from his transactions? Wouldn't François Mitterrand be required to reply to the questions of the investigative judge? It would be escalation, scandal, revealing perhaps the double life of the the Chief of State in the worst circumstances. It is one hypothesis among others . . . .

A coincidence: in mid-August, Time Magazine publishes an investigation entitled "What's Wrong with the President of the French Republic?". The Americans have remarked that François Mitterrand, during his time in Florida, in April, "was pale as a corpse." They think they know that he travels with dialysis apparatus and that during the few hours spent at Key Largo, where he met George Bush, he received a blood transfusion. Finally, they report that his intellectual powers are weakened and that he tires very quickly. Even if this information is false, the Time article, citing "reliable sources," is troubling. To what end did the entourage of the American President release it and why now? At the Élysée, they will believe it is an attempt to weaken François Mitterrand, whose diplomacy inconvenienced the White House when the Gulf crisis had just broken out.

As for the edited advisory episode, it brings out the influence exercised by Michel Charasse on the Chief of State. He was one of those who know the most things, about everybody and about everything that happened during 14 years. He was to be found everywhere -- in political life, in finance, in law, in private life. In this government, he supplanted Jacques Attali who, nevertheless, during ten years was "special counsellor" to the President. It was surprising, regarding Attali, to find nothing in his Verbatims on the health of the one whom he followed morning to night, to the point of learning to play golf so as to be able to accompany him even in his hours of leisure. In fact, as usual, not all is clear; something happened. The President very clearly censored his special counsellor.

In the manuscript of Verbatim 1, which had been read by the President and by a few intimates, Jacques Attali had written in December, 1981: "The President tells me that he has cancer and that he is condemned." A few days later, still in December, Attali wrote again: "The President tells me, 'The doctors are imbeciles; they are mistaken. I don't have cancer.'" But the two quoted passages were not published. The President caused them to disappear.

Michel Charasse had another dimension, another role. He was the obligatory intercessor at the Élysée when a problem arose regarding the status of a protégé or when a delicate or dangerous situation arose. He was the confidant who asked nothing, unlike some. He said to me, "You know, I don't need anything. I have Puy-Guillaume, the Senate, so I am not going to get in shit with anything else." I only opposed him one time in the presence of the President, which posed for the latter a disagreeable problem: to have to decide between two men who were indispensable to him.

The status of the Inspection Général of Social Affairs, of which I am a member, was at issue. A decree modifying it, which was to pass before the Council of Ministers, had been withdrawn at the intervention of Charasse. This text had been worked on for 20 years. At the last minute Charasse had convinced François Mitterrand that one of its provisions was against the law. But this was false. In reality, the Élysée counsellor for judicial affairs wanted to modify an article in order to permit the nomination to external assignment of people aged up to 50 years -- in this instance the brother of Henri Nallet seemed to be involved. I saw the President to convey to him my discontent. I judged this behavior to be. scandalous. He received my critique very badly: "The law is the law. It must be respected." I protested, I assailed him with notes threatening to resign from the Inspection Général. He called me a "madman," spoke again to me of my mental rigidity. In the end, the decree was passed without the "amendment" of Charasse. For once, he has not won!

Chapter 8

For ten years a semi-clandestine organization oversaw the health of the President. It was made up of Professor Steg, "Mister Prostate", as he was called in medical circles given his reputation, the heads of the health departments of the military services and Joelle Govin, the nurse who from the outset was responsible for taking laboratory test samples from the patient. I served as coordinator, in permanent contact with the President, coordinating problems posed by his day to day medical care and signing the twice yearly news releases. Vigilance, confidence and secrecy were the three imperatives.

An initial difficulty threw confusion into our group. At the end of 1989 General Laverdant learned that a newcomer accompanied the President on his most recent private travels. It was Colonel Claude Kalfon, MD, whom Laverdant did not know either personally or by professional reputation. When he traveled privately, in France or overseas, François Mitterrand was accompanied by only one or two people from security. There was no physician. That was the case from 1981 on. One might consider that a mistake in judgement, but everyone was in agreement, including the President. A private trip did not present the same risks as an official trip.

How was it then that Dr. Kafon ended up in his entourage? It was Commander Alain Le Carro, head of the Security Group for the President of the Republic (SGPR) -- a State within the State at the Élysée Palace -- who got the idea. Le Carro and Kalfon met at Villacoublay, where this military physician was responsible for the medical emergency unit. His precise title was medical consultant to the military air transport command, a unit "on which the sun never sets," as they say in the Army, since they have bases all over the world.

According to Gen. Laverdant, who did not appreciate his being there, Dr Kalfon apparently never practiced, and had only ever worked air evacuation. His service record, supposedly, was not up to the standard one would expect for what he was being asked to do. At the request of the general, a meeting to clear the air was held at the Élysée Palace in the office of the head of the cabinet, Gilles Menage, in the presence of commander Le Carro but in the absence of Dr. Kalfon. It was obvious that the gendarme had overstepped his function in treading into the medical arena, without checking with those in charge. He was aware of it since, at first, he said Col. Kalfon was a member of the SPGR.

Nevertheless, the military doctor remained. He even played golf with the President. He accompanied the "second family" on their private trips. He established his own relationships. He became more self-assured earning those invisible stripes which are not sewn onto the sleeves of uniforms, but which count more than the visible ones because they have been awarded for having given confidential services.

Kalfon proposed the creation of a medical service at the Élysée Palace. Gen. Laverdnt opposed it. Admiral Lanxade, personal chief of staff to the President, arbitrated the conflict at Mitterrand's request and sided with Dr. Kalfon. The admiral informed me of the result by suggesting that I meet with Kalfon since the Head of State "wants him there." I was not opposed to the project, provided I remained the only doctor treating the President. That is how Dr. Kalfon became, in June 1991, Director of the Élysée medical service. Gen. Laverdant's retirement facilitated this solution. Gen. Jean-Pierre Dali, a courteous and diplomatic man and fine surgeon, succeeded him at Val-de-Grace hospital.

The President destabilized our organization. Information did not always flow as it should have. Dr. Kalfon appeared on certain official trips even though I was present. He attached himself to Danièle Mitterrand, accompanying her on her visits to hospitals and day care centers. More and more frequently, overseas, the President invited him to the breakfast table. Up to that point, only I had had this sort of friendly access. Thereafter our dealings would no longer be the same. Something was breaking down.

Month by month, Dr. Kalfon's influence grew, except that he knew nothing about the medical records. He did not even know that François Mitterrand was taking an anticoagulant. When I told him, he fumed, furious, to Gen. Dali, his immediate superior, insisting on the risk being run by the President. It goes without saying that he knew nothing about the ten year struggle against cancer. He was to learn of that only in 1992 after the first operation.

It is easy to understand that François Mitterrand would want new blood on his medical team, but what was the use if the new candidate was ignorant of the facts? In medicine, as in politics, the President created antagonism. Without going all the way, without ever speaking of cancer, the unpronounceable word.

If occasionally he let the word slip out, it was always concerning some one else. Except for the one time during the summer of 1990, for ten years you find not a trace of it. It was as if I had passed a damp sponge over a dusty mirror which now showed only a clean image. But it was only an illusion.

The life of François Mitterrand makes no sense if measured by a single truth. He thought that truth contains it own opposite. With him, you never knew what was theater and what was reality, whether he was acting or not. For example, he liked to convince himself that he was ill, even though it might not be true. I saw him, after the first operation, describe his state of health to close friends or associates and immediately belie what he had just said with a quick gesture -- dropping a pen and grasping it briskly.

After so many years of acting, François Mitterrand multiplied himself. He could no longer live in what is normally called authenticity. In a recent book (The Wounds of Truth, Flammarion), Laurent Fabius tried to find the "real key" to François Mitterrand. He uses the word ambivalence, but not in the ordinary sense, or as simple duplicity. It is rather, as he writes, "a fundamental, metaphysical ambivalence which makes him consider everything as itself and its opposite, every individual as good and evil, every situation as simultaneously tragic and full of hope".

In order to go on, I could only be a psychoanalytical mirror but never a flatterer. One day in 1994, in an elevator, he was fuming against his associates. "I am surrounded only by courtesans, ass kissers," he complained. And, turning to me, he added "However, certainly not you, the Lutheran pastor!" But it had become unbearable to him for me to remain at his side.

Up to the very end, his strength was that he could keep separate from himself each part of the universe of which he was the center. As in the atom, he was the nucleus and those around him were the electrons. He arranged things so that he would always be surrounded by equal numbers of positrons and negatrons so that there would always be a balance of forces. Gubler, he might have said, was a free electron, free of my orbit. The rue de Bievre, Latche, Venice, Bordes, Solutre, the Abbey of Taise were so many electrons. This richly informs the explanation of his behavior.

Each of us has a secret garden hidden behind a door. Most people have only one. François Mitterrand was peculiar in that he would occasionally let some people think they had found his secret door. Mistake! They were only approaching one of the numerous entries to his labyrinth.

It brings to mind a hall of mirrors, such as you see in carnival side shows, where reflections are multiplied infinitely. He liked to deceive, to scramble reality. When he visited the Valley of the Kings, he was very inquisitive about the motivations of the Egyptian architects in their skillful construction of false bed chambers for the pharaohs, and of corridors which led to nowhere. He was fascinated by this engineering of the pretend. Jack Lang, seated on a stone beside him, was talking about art and technique; he was thinking about secrecy and protection.

When he wanted to know something, he was extremely cautious. To be certain that no one was lying to him he would ask questions indirectly so that his interlocutor would not know exactly what he was after. His brother, Robert, had an American specialist come to give a diagnosis. At first, he feigned surprise at the visit, which he of course knew all about. He invited the professor to breakfast, they talked about this and that and tangentially, or at least so it seemed, about the doctor's work, his research, his patients. In the end, François Mitterrand had obtained the answer to the question never asked directly: what were, in cases like his, the survival rates, remissions, etc. He had learned more without revealing himself.

Another example of why he was so difficult to care for. He always insisted on collective decision making and never accepted it. He demanded team work, and never accepted it. He used people one after another. For writing he did not like bound notebooks, he preferred loose stationery. He did not like writing filled with erasures and scratch-overs, though he was an expert at them himself. Only clean, impeccable pages were to remain for posterity. If the Steg-Gubler team was rejected, that was because it also was a litany of "erasures and cross overs". Every correction was the mark of an event, an act, a lie, a weakness. The team had to be rubbed out, erased. It did not matter that I had gone beyond my role as physician.

The President enjoyed using a certain kind of irony. When Kalfon was accepted at the Élysée Palace, he said to me, in front of his secretaries, with a smile on his face: "So, how does it feel now that you are no longer the only doctor?" Another day, on his return from a quick visit overseas that he had kept from me -- he did that twice --: to Beirut after the attack on the French troops and to Crete to meet with Qaddafi -, he asked me in a mocking tone: "Scared you, didn't I?" Another time, feeling lively, he pretended to take interest in my health in front of Joelle Govin, his favorite nurse. "Do you know whether you are sick or not? After all, you may die before I do!" Turning to the young woman he added: "Wouldn't that be sad, Madame. We would cry." That was Mitterrand, with his way of talking about others' deaths when he was probably talking about himself.

Was he annoyed that my capacity as an employee at the Inspection General of Social Affairs, another of my activities, made me freer of him? When he awarded me the Legion of Honor - conferred by Jean-Louis Bianco, the Minister under whom I worked-, he spoke in his speech about that "gray government department", but he wasted no words on the work of the recipient of the award. It was as if it were somehow annoying. Later, on certain occasions, when the war of the doctors was raging, he would use that activity as an excuse for not including me in new initiatives. "He is unavailable," he would answer, dishonestly, to those who were surprised at my absence, even though I could be found anywhere in a few minutes.

Chapter 9

François Mitterrand hesitated a long time before allowing himself to be operated upon. He thought that his condition was tolerable and that other treatments could be tried. At the end of August 1992, Steg and I went together to Latch to convince him that intervention had become necessary. He still hesitated. His primary perception of oncology made him fear surgery. His belief was that a lancet would discharge the metastases.

A Mystere 20 brought us to Les Landes, where the President was vacationing with his family. He received us in his sheep-pen where, after having examined him, Steg pleaded for the operation as soon as possible, employing as many manners as that eminent surgeon, who took care of the world's greatest, knew how to do. The President insisted that we remain for lunch. Alain Duhamel and Jean-Pierre Elkabbach had been invited that day. In the course of their presentations, it was explained that our visit was impromptu: We were in the area and had wanted to say hello to him. We left with his agreement, obtained with difficulty.

His relationship with his doctors became affected by it. The benefit of the operation was quickly forgotten and, with the return of troubles, he reckoned that he wouldn't be cured, that in fact the disease would be aggravated. He concluded that medicine would betray him and that his prejudices were justified. The change was brutal. He became more irritable, more aggressive towards those who didn't know how to spare him this ordeal.

The endoscopic resection that the President underwent at Cochin Hospital on September 11, 1992, took place under good conditions. Bernard Debre, chief of urology, ventured to affirm that "everything is benign," while Steg and I reserved our comments. The maintenance of the secret was still our preoccupation. If the tests on the sample fragments were made at Cochin in the patient's name, the results would reveal the preexistence of the illness. Did the President wish it?

Thus we agreed to send the specimens elsewhere under a false name, still the mysterious Xavier Carpentier, so that nobody could prove the source. The laboratory would reveal that the lesions were cancerous, it would obviously see that it was a matter of a cancer under treatment, but it would not say this in its report because that wasn't what was being asked of it.

To whom to confide this secret mission? If anyone in my professional relations showed the requisite qualities, above all discretion, it was Dr. Jean-Pierre Tarot. I contacted him and he set up a meeting at a street corner, where he arrived on a motorbike. Thus a scene took place that was closer to a TV thriller than the idea one has of the prodigious attentions to the President of the Republic. I gave him the bottles containing the specimens, which 48 hours later he would return in the same condition with the results of the test, the reading of which would tell him too no more than what we wanted to be known. These were the first steps that Dr. Tarot took into the very closed medical circle of François Mitterrand.

Some months earlier I had made his acquaintance when the President had asked me to retrieve the address and telephone number of a specialist in the fight against suffering who had taken care of his friend Jean Riboud. He wanted to send another of his acquaintances to be examined, who was in the terminal phase of a cancer and was suffering a lot (it was General Oliver, of Villacoublay). I found Dr. Tarot in a clinic at Pantin.

According to the President's recommendations, the general was brought to Val-de-Grace, where it was arranged that the patient ended his days with dignity. A report was conveyed to the President, for which I suggested a letter of thanks be sent to Tarot, accompanied by a gift. I would go myself to bring it to him.

He had contact with me a few months later. He was bored with his clinic and wanted to leave it and look for work. I gave him an introduction to the Commission of Nomenclature. At the same time, at the request of the President, I put him in contact with such and such of his sick friends. He would also take care of a Landes peasant who was adopted by an important industrialist. Tarot did not encounter François Mitterrand again. It was only in November 1993 that I presented him to the President, who had back pain. He definitely entered the entourage only after the second operation.

Then he was installed at the Élysée, where he took a room, was admitted into the first circle, and shared in the family meals. The friends and associates of the President asked what he wanted to gain from it. It was a time when, at the Élysée, people liked to joke by calling Tarot "Rasputin". He tried to eliminate the aides-de-camp, and one of them had to put him brutally in his place. He became the cook -- "Bring him a soup tonight" -- the majordomo, the nurse. That had never been seen before.

Between the chief of state and Tarot there arose a complicity of which there is nothing to say except that it was carried on to the detriment of medical quality and rigor. They had entered into a dubious game. A doctor ought to maintain a certain distance from his patient. When one comes to live permanently with his patient, it is no longer a normal relationship. Tarot fell under the charm of the President and could no longer be the man who helped him endure the pain. Tarot prevented me from entering the President's room; he even refused to tell me what he administered to him. "I cannot do it, because the President does not want it known," he would say. It was obvious that he was seeking to take power.

Somebody else, Robert Mitterrand, the President's elder brother and accomplice, meddled directly with the health of the chief of state and exercised a considerable influence upon him. He was the only one of the family to be in on the secret. He was the closest to the President on the intellectual and emotional levels. Robert always doubted the competence of French doctors, to the point of going to the United States to be cared for. With his wife Arlette, he made a climate of suspicion prevail about the treatment followed by the chief of state, the validity and efficacy of which he questioned. He was largely responsible for the doctors' quarrel that began at the time of the first operation and that would not stop.

At his insistance, he obtained from the President the authorization to have an American urologist of Brazilian origin who practiced in Detroit, Professor Pontes, come to Paris. He would never examine François Mitterrand. There was a meeting at the Élysée at a cup of tea. But with the unconditional support of Robert, who became in some way his correspondent in Paris, Professor Pontes proposed a modification of the treatment and gave his directions from Detroit by fax. He was obviously not in earnest, but François Mitterrand let it happen.

Still at Robert's instigation, a new doctor was called, Professor Turpin, head of endocrinology at Pitie-Salpetriere. At the start, nobody told him the exact state of the illness. He believed he had come to take the President in hand. Wrong. He went away, was recalled, came again. They only wanted his advice about a new medicine.

The ups and downs and incidents multiplied. After the operation a new treatment was agreed upon, for certain people thought that the illness would no longer respond to the therapy that had been so successful since 1981. But the President hesitated a long time before accepting it. It was only in December 1992 that he consented to adopt this substitute remedy, whose failure was established six months later. In October 1993 Pontes, in spite of opposition from Steg and me, proposed a course of chemotherapy that would last until July 1994. In November, the symptoms accelerated. One Wednesday after the Council of ministers, he said that he could not breathe any longer. Call the Élysée. He was conducted to Val-de-Grace, where he underwent some tests. Negative. I didn't panic, I was used to his distresses. Dr. Kalfon, by contrast, was very disturbed and suggested a scan. The President was still against it. He didn't want to be encased in that machine, and one of his acquaintances had died during a test of this type.

So that the exact nature of the treatment would be unknown, I poured the contents of the marked capsules into unmarked ones, only using 75 percent of the product because the patient took it badly and became weaker. His renal condition worsened. There was a risk of enuresis -- a mortal risk. The second operation became inevitable. The patient shrank back again from this solution. "How necessary would it be?" he complained. He saw himself with prostheses, an invalid.

Robert was opposed to surgery. He wrote to his brother to put him on guard. Pontes thought better of waiting. There was no urgency. François Mitterrand, although exhausted, nevertheless agreed to return to the operating table July 16, 1994. The operation proceeded less well than the first. It took four hours, as opposed to an hour and a half in 1992.

Bernard Debre, in his capacity as the officer in charge, organized the operation, although it was Adolphe Steg who operated. He forbade my presence on the operating team. Nevertheless, I remained behind the door, dressed, ready to enter if desired. It happened thus. Steg called me to ask my advice. He could set only one probe in the right kidney and it didn't look as if he could plant the second in the left. Should he persist? Make a deviation? In my head, the film started playing in accelerated motion: Thirteen years of survival! A permanent pocket? That's out, he would not forgive us for it; one can live with only one kidney in good condition. It was better to stop.

Before François Mitterrand woke up, I explained the situation to Anne Pingeot, Mazarine's mother. It was she who accompanied him to Cochin. At the same time, Danièle Mitterrand was being operated on in the heart of the Broussais Hospital. The scenario was identical to one two years before. Mitterrand's wife was already absent. She was on mission to South America in the course of her humanitarian work. She was not deceived.

At Cochin, Anne would sleep on a mattress -- the place was too small to fit a second bed -- during the whole hospitalization. Mazarine would often come to embrace her father, but discreetly, coming by a service door. His sons also came and Jean-Christophe happened upon Mazarine, which provoked a painful incident, for they didn't know each other.

Life at the hospital was ruled by Anne Pingeot, who involved herself in all the problems, as if the second family was substituted for the first, the official one. The situation was more than delicate for the entourage. The members of the security staff served as a buffer. Everything the patient ate came from the kitchens of the Élysée. His clothes and even his famous made-to-order pillows were brought in.

He received heaps of flowers and kilos of chocolates, sent by compassionate Frenchmen. At the beginning, he sent everything to the Élysée, until he read in a newspaper that General De Gaulle, also operated on at Cochin (by Professor Aboulker, with Steg assisting), had given the flowers and delicacies to the patients and nurses. The hospital personnel who took care of him would receive a gift, and a picture of the group would be taken, the day he left the hospital.

Afterwards the President rested in the chateau of Souzy-la-Briche, in the Essonne, with Anne Pingeot, Mazarine, and Dr. Kalfon, who was installed in the role of confidential doctor. In August he sojourned at Belle-Ile, where Dr. Tarot came to join him and where their privileged relations would begin.

In 1992 Anne Pingeot asked me to tell her the truth. I did it by reminding her of the past: "You are quite aware of where we come from." "It's true," she had answered, "You have performed one miracle, but it is necessary to perform a second." That day she understood that I could not restore the President to the condition in which he had been before the operation. Nobody could, because it was impossible. I knew then that he was going to turn to others.

A friend of Anne's, Regine Bosco, a psychologist, had told her, "I know someone capable of performing miracles." It was Dr. Philippe de Kuyper, a homeopath from Versailles. Then he was called in his turn to take charge of the patient.

Chapter 10

The odd thing about Philippe Kuyper is his taste for natural medicines, and more specifically of the products made by the strange and mysterious professor Mirko Beljanski, who is very controversial within the medical circles. On March 10th, 1994, the Saint-Etienne court condemned Mirko Beljanski for illegal practice of medicine and pharmacy. That was a condemnation without penalty. But the gendarmes [2] seized all the drugs found in his Isere-located laboratory. The rest of it was taken off of the shelves in tens of drugstores.

The work of "Professor Beljanski" consisted of researching new non-toxic molecules extracted from natural products which would have a selective effect on cancer and some virus-related disease, AIDS being one of them. Philippe de Kuyper claims he was successfully cured of an infection thanks to Beljanski's method some ten years ago. He has been treating his patients with Beljanski's products ever since.

Aged 72, Doctor of Science (his sole diploma) Mirko Beljanski is a former researcher with the Pasteur Institute and the CNRS, the French national center for scientific research. He is one of these scientists who practice on the brink of legal medicine and complain about witch hunting when accused of being illusion sellers and quacks. How can one not have suspicions about his honesty when scrutinizing his organization?

Beljanski would refuse to divulge the biologic composition of his plants extracts, which he could very well mix together with usual medical drugs. He had founded non-profit organizations such as COBRA, the most important of all. This Center for Oncological and Biological Applied Research was dissolved after his trial. COBRA would ask patients with cancer and AIDS for membership. Regular donations were required from members for the duration of the medical treatment. If they stopped donating, they would not be treated anymore. The average cost was 3000 francs a month. Lastly, Beljanski required his "followers" to give up all the other prescriptions. That is the very reason which led Health minister Claude Evin to lodge a complaint against the researcher and his puppet company.

That helps one understand why, in a interview in the weekly magazine VSD, in April 1995, Kuyper refused to say if Mitterrand was taking the prohibited drugs. Kuyper argued that it was a matter of doctor-patient confidentiality. An unnecessary precaution, as several persons had seen Beljanski's pills in a suitcase that Kuyper put with the President 's luggage. The easy-to-identify pills fell on the floor accidentally.

In the interview, the homeopath explained that, in this case of prostate cancer, Beljanski molecules were coupled with the radiotherapy to protect the patient from its side-effects. "Beljanski's product is the only radioprotector to my knowledge," he would say. "It was extracted from the Ginko Biloba family, the first tree to grow back after Hiroshima." The pills were made specially for the President and delivered from October on. Mirko Beljanski and François Mitterrand even met, at the researcher's home, in December of 1994.

Quite strange for the head of State to hold in such esteem a man who was condemned nine months earlier for illegally practicing medicine. How mysterious! We are light years from medical clarity. From that time on, things were in another category altogether. Usual rules did not exist anymore. It was the Steg & Gubler classic school versus the Kuyper & Beljanski alternative school.

If desperate, sick people can be provided with emotional comfort, there is nothing shocking in taking medical advice from healers and magi, as long as the on-going treatment is not interrupted. Fortunately, the President didn't suffer from this, as Kuyper had to backpedal in his demand for exclusivity. The President didn't drop the hormone therapy. "Stop everything," demanded Kuyper. But justified protests that he was endangering the patient's life led the homeopath to back down.

When they learned that the President was being treated by Beljanski, the medical community started complaining. Health minister Simone Veil was puzzled. Should she issue a statement reminding everyone of the researcher's condemnation? I was discreetly contacted by Dominique Le Vert. I gave him the following message: do nothing. Do not start a controversy with the President nor a new debate about alternative medicines. The minister did follow my advice.

In the Autumn of 1994, François Mitterrand's medical entourage was in complete internal rivalry. There was a total lack of coherence and deontology. Everyone for themselves. The President likes this kind of situation. But in this case, his life is at stake. Nearly every single day, a new conflict broke out. Sometimes, it was Kuyper and I, having an argument about a hormone that he believed to be carcinogenic. Sometime it was Tarot vs Steg. But most of the time, it was Tarot vs Kuyper.

Jean-Pierre Tarot had been encroaching on professor Steg's territory. He had even proposed a new technique for applying probes, which had been used experimentally at the Saint-Louis hospital. He decided to gather all the doctors to discuss the matter. The meeting took place at my Paris home one November evening. Steg, Raynal (from the Hartman nursing home), and Le Duc (Saint-Louis hospital) attended. Kuyper did not. Tarot criticized Kuyper, sarcastically nicknaming him "the guru." Tarot showed a letter he wrote to Kuyper. It started like this: "the patient claims he is poorly looked after and can't bear the ongoing therapy, etc." According to Tarot, this was not the President's judgment but Kuyper's. Tarot's behavior was understandable but showed our divisions to our fellow doctors who did not know the President. The meeting turned into a fight. I asked everybody to leave, except Steg, who was utterly crushed.

Nonetheless, we had agreed that the President should undergo local radiotherapy. The radiotherapist had still to be chosen. I suggested the name of professor Eschwege, who usually worked with Kuyper. Tarot and Kuyper have both another candidate in mind. Kuyper wants his friend, doctor Raynal. Tarot favors professor Housset, and he wins, arguing to the President that the Hartman nursing home offers advantages as far as discretion is concerned (though that didn't prevent paparazzi from snapping pictures of the patient on the doorstep).

Tarot and Kuyper were waging a relentless war of influence. While Tarot was omnipresent in the Élysée palace, where he has moved his belongings, Kuyper only met with the President once a week. Both men communicated by mail, phone and fax. The continuous battle reached its climax in late November.

In an letter dated November 28, Tarot writes to Kuyper: "Except in case of emergency or direct request by the President, I can't stay [on the medical staff], as I can no longer support your exclusive therapeutic drift which is unjustified and utterly risky. I am consternated by what is going on. This rift is detrimental to the patient (and the office of president). I believe you bear the whole responsibility. It is up to you now to make sure it doesn't boil down to what could be considered a 'no help to an endangered person' offense."

At the end of the letter, Tarot regrets "all this loss of time and unneeded suffering!" He says he can't stay, but he does, even though the President hasn't asked for it.

It was totally crazy. Medical equipment would enter the Élysée Palace secretly and leave a few hours later. The rig was hidden under covers in the back of a plain car. I guess it was magnetic wave producers designed to alleviate the patient's grief.

I didn't have any control over these new decisions, for the President thought it was neither necessary nor even correct to let me know what was going on. When Mitterrand asked for Kuyper, I would be informed through Joelle Govin. This very devoted and very serious professional gave me a call to let me know what happened to her: "the President asked me to take a blood sample and send it to the laboratory. He ordered me: 'I forbid you to tell it to doctor Gubler!'" That was a new step. Never, since 1981, had the President tried to hide health-related matters from me. I was his amulet. My presence alone would reassure him. I didn't know if he had ordered the blood test because he doubted I had told him the whole truth, or if there was another reason for it.

Tarot still had to get rid of Kalfon. He started to remove this stumbling block on his way to exclusive medical power over the President. Colonel-Doctor Kalfon was in favor at that time, when he was taking care of Anne and Mazarine. Who wouldn't be flattered and dazzled by this easy life, leaving a jet plane to embark on another one, meeting important people and having everyone at one's beck and call? Coming from Villacoublay, modest doctor Kalfon was a happy man in the Élysée. the President let him think he was priceless. And Kalfon thought so.

Tarot insisted he wanted to be on the President's plane during official trips. But complying with the Vega plan, Colonel Kalfon or I, or both, also rode in the plane. Tarot's name didn't officially appear on the list of the presidential medical staff. This redundancy was a problem, in view of the plane's capability. Once having to intervene to keep Kalfon on the Mystere 50 jet, Hubert Vedrine made some one else get out of the plane. On his way back, Mitterrand asked his aide-de-camp why Kalfon was in his plane. He thought he shouldn't be.

When he learned about the President's comment, Kalfon asked for a meeting with him. He wanted to know the whole of it. Because of his military background, he thought this kind of conflict could be best resolved by an outright explanation. He admired the head of state and foolishly believed Mitterrand would favor him rather than Tarot. The conversation turned sour. Refusing the officer's explanations, the President got angry and said, "Just obey! I am the chief of the armies after all!" Ruthlessly, he added: "You're worthless!" This triggered a psychological shock for the soldier, who had gone into a wholehearted relationship which he thought to be deep and reciprocal. Tears in his eyes, Kalfon was so emotionally destroyed that some in the Élysée Palace feared a desperate act. They could see his honor had been hit. Like others, the colonel hadn't realized that there could be no frankness between Mitterrand and the ones who did not belong to his tiny microcosm.

Doctor Kalfon's disgrace was due to another event with no obvious relationship to the health of the head of state. Indeed, Paris Match magazine released pictures of Mazarine, unveiling part of a secret once shared by Kalfon. It was this secret which gave him some importance. Now, in the eyes of the President, he had lost his special status. He was outranked in the subtle and ever moving rooster of the Élysée court. An ordinary doctor again, Kalfon was outranked by competitors, all busy fighting one again another for the favor of a weakened President.

The story is as beautiful as its star's first name: Mazarine. She was a cute young Mediterranean-looking girl. She was born twice. First in 1974, when she was born for real. And then in 1994, when she came out of the shade. How Mitterrand actually managed to keep her secret despite all political observers closely scrutinizing him for 30 years due to his position, will long be discussed.

Did the President himself perhaps trigger what came to be considered by some a media quarry? Did he let people know about Mazarine deliberately or not? Just as he had started a controversy when he helped free-lance journalist Pierre Péan find about his career path within general Pétain's World War II pro-Nazi Vichy Regime, Mitterrand was fully aware of the consequences to be expected after bringing Mazarine to light. Did he want all the truth to be know after all? The man's ambivalence allows all kinds of hypothesis and hypocrisy to be equally considered.

François Mitterrand reacted to Paris Match's photos only after reading articles suggesting that he did agree. He asked Anne Lauvergeon to issue a communiqué to the AFP [French Press Agency]. The press release was very specific regarding two points: Mazarine had never accompanied her father during official trips (some journalists had alleged she went with him to South Africa) and there had been no agreement what so ever between the President and Paris Match magazine.

The Élysée Palace had all the reason to worry about the President's problems with the press. Physically, the patient was at his lowest. From this time on, rumors started about his resignation or impending death. Moreover, one knew how much he cared for Mazarine. Undoubtedly, she was number one in his heart. Her disclosure was an additional problem for the Presidential entourage, as appearances had to be kept up.

Chapter 11

Mazarine was François Mitterrand's last true love. What his two sons couldn't bring him, he found with her. She was bright, balanced, brought up with a taste for arts by her mother, a keeper of Orsay Museum. Her father shared with her his passion for literature. She was a girl moving with the times, direct, simple, not taking her condition seriously. The secret in which she lived created, between these two people, a very strong relationship. They shared something exceptional that joined them in a rare complicity. What she was, she owed to him. He was proud to have shaped such a mind.

As far as Mazarine was concerned, her transition from shadow to light was natural once the child became an adult. The frustration of the father, proud of his daughter achieving brilliant studies, but not allowed to officially be seen with her, was becoming unbearable. Little by little, the border had shifted between the private and the public matter.

For the first time in her life, Mazarine appeared at the Élysée on the occasion of a dinner offered in honor of the Emperor of Japan. As a child, she had been in the unofficial suite during short trips within the Hexagon, but it wasn't the same. She was seven in 1981, fourteen in 1988.

There are many anecdotes telling the story of this little hidden girl. The one about the cat she had taken in during a visit her father paid to a country town is pretty. At the time of departure, once in the helicopter, the kitten, frightened by the noise, escaped from Mazarine's arms and ran away. Quick and unsuccessful search, sulky little girl, impatient father who, as usual, was late. Eventually, departure took place without the animal, which would be found a little later. A military helicopter fetched it the following day to bring it back to Paris. It was a lovely cat, but expensive.

On Wednesdays, after the Cabinet, François Mitterrand used to take Michel Charasse and a few friends out for lunch. Sometimes, Mazarine would join them, on her own, with her mother, or with school friends. If they were numerous, the President would book a small lounge where he would sit enthroned amongst these youths impressed by his talent and his education. One day in November 1994, he mentionned the doubts he had about the efficiency of his new treatment. He suggested he might change it. Mazarine broke in strongly to reproach her father for his lack of perseverance. "You never follow your decisions to their conclusions." The conversation turned out to be so intimate that the young girl asked the President to follow her, ordering him: "Come, I've got to talk to you . . ." And he obeyed.

Mazarine feared her father's hesitations and about-faces were harmful to his health. At these moments, he couldn't sustain her gaze, in which he could see something like defiance. She had grown up and he felt that he was in her debt, that he had a duty of love and recognition.

Her influence was much greater than all the other members of the family's. Danièle, Christine Gouze-Raynal or Roger Hanin sometimes dared give an opinion the President would listen to without interrupting them with a gesture, as he would have done with others. "François, you should listen to Gubler." They would never go much further, seldom tackling the basics: that was Mazarine's privilege.

He never told me he had a daughter. He would beat about the bush, talking about a female friend of his who had a little girl he had to visit. Moreover, at that time, she wouldn't be called Mazarine or "Maza", as some people call her nowadays. Her mother, in my presence, would say Marie. Was it to protect her from indiscretions? I don't know.

It took years before I learned the child I was seeing was Mazarine. It was Laurence Soudet who told me. Much later, I could appraise the strength of the relationship joining the father and the daughter. I had often seen the President with his sons, never with Mazarine. It was a revelation.

Two days after his leaving Cochin hospital, in 1992, François Mitterrand invited me over to dinner in the gardens of the Élysée. Danièle wasn't back from South Africa yet. I had first refused, because my son was alone at home. He asked me to bring him along and he even sent a car to fetch him. We had dinner under the arbour. Mazarine was there and nobody had introduced her to me. She would call him "Papa." During the meal, the father and the daugther indulged in an intellectual tournament, those mind games in which they would pretend to be against one another for the sake of conversation. One could feel they were very close to each other.

Because of wanting to hide everything, the clash was unavoidable. One day, general Laverdant telephoned me, he was beside himself. "It won't do anymore, the GSPR are going their own way, I'm not told when something important happens. The other day, nobody even called me when the President's petite fille [3] was admitted into Val-de-Grace hospital after being kicked by a horse. Security could have informed me . . .!" I claimed ignorance and assured him this wouldn't happen anymore.

The day after, I saw Danièle Mitterrand at her office in the Élysée: "It is quite extraordinary that Security doesn't inform Laverdant when your granddaughters have a problem."

"Well, why?" she answered, astonished.

"One of them got injured in an accident, didn't she?"

"What are you on about? Who told you that?"

"Laverdant did."

"I don't understand at all. Call him."

I dialed the number of the Val-de-Grace in front of Danièle and her secretary. She heard me repeating the account of the accident. Until Laverdant, understanding my mistake, told me. "What, you don't know the President has a daughter?"

Behind me, Danièle was loosing patience: "Turn the volume up so that I hear Laverdant's answer!" Not knowing how to get out of it, I started mumbling: "Ah yes, yes, it was in Latche. Ok then, I understand. Thank you very much . . ." And I hung up. I explained to Danièle: "It was in Latche. One of the kids rides a horse, doesn't she?" "It's true," Danièle confirmed. It had been a close shave.

In reality, Mazarine had been injured in Paris, at the Military Riding School where she practiced regularly, and she had been taken to the Val-de-Grace by the GSPR men, who were not allowed to say her name. She then had been examined under a false identity and no one knew. Mazarine was still a child and Laverdant, naturally, had mentioned a "petite fille".

To be honest, I wasn't quite thunderstruck. When I would buy presents, on the occasion of trips abroad, The President would ask me: "What can one find interesting in this country? Look out and tell me." In the evening, I would show him a few objects, very often small jewelry bought for my daughters. With a detached tone he would then confide: "These don't look bad, could you buy me some?" (One, two or three, as the case may be). I wasn't supposed to know they were intended for Mazarine. François Mitterrand would only explain they were for a young girl.

There were other clues. When Mazarine would come to my office, she was accompanied by GSPR men. Her mother would come by bike, but her, she would come by car, escorted by two policemen.

At the beginning of the first seven-year term, I received death threats and I told the Prime Minister about them. Some precautions needed to be taken. My car would be mine cleared before entering the Élysée. Someone was threatening me simply because I was treating the head of state. I've always received letters from mad people. There was even one doctor who would write to me every six months to tell me I was lying. He would claim that he knew what disease the President was suffering from. Anonymous letters would promise me I was about to be bumped off. It lasted two or three months. I was worrying a bit. However, I would fear for my son. I understand why Mazarine was entitled to such a treat. She was the weak link in the President's chain of protection.

In my opinion, Danièle Mitterrand always knew. At the time of the story about the horse accident, she quickly understood my confusion between Mazarine and her grand daughters, but she wanted to go the whole way, to know, to grab a piece of this life that she didn't know, yet that was so close to her.

However, she ignored, just like her sons, the fact that her husband had been suffering from cancer since 1981. Very few people were in on the secret from the start. Apart from eleven people of the medical profession (Steg, Gubler, Laverdant, Thomas, Dali, Dorne, Govin, Lombard, an anesthesist, plus a radiologist and a nurse), there was Robert Mitterrand, Anne Pingeot and maybe Roger-Patrice Pelat and André Rousselet. With François Mitterrand, one can't be so sure. He could confide in a distant acquaintance what he would hide from his close relatives. He spoke in front of Jacques Attali, then retracted. It is therefore impossible to keep an exact account of the people in the know, but there were not more than about fifteen of us.

We were coming the end of 1994. François Mitterrand was undergoing five radiation sessions a week. I would still go with him, but I no longer had illusions about my role. Tarot was now sharing the patient's intimacy. I didn't count anymore. The President could dismiss me if he didn't still need me to sign the December medical bulletin. The twentieth, the last one of his public life, as six months later he wouldn't be at the Élysée anymore.

To ask Tarot or Kuyper to do it instead of me would have been more logical and more honest, but it would have forced him to give explanations. Me too, I guess, I should have given some. The President preferred the status quo, even if it didn't reflect reality. I certainly was free to put an end to it for good, but I considered it my duty to stay until the end. From the medical point of view, I was his memory. He could still need me. My expertise, my seniority, should induce him to keep me near him as an adviser, in order to enlighten him quite objectively.

On the contrary, he wouldn't spare me. I had no access to his apartments. To see him, I would have to talk to his secretary, like anybody else. So I wrote to him. I first sent him a copy of a letter I had addressed to the other doctors, in which I was deploring the lack of coordination, the dispersion of efforts, in short, the confusion and anarchy that were so prevalent. In another letter, I reminded the President that, as his personal doctor I was to receive all the information about him, which was no longer happening as I was kept out of the loop. He answered none of the letters.

On December 31st 1994, he had to make the traditional end of year speech and, as usual, he feared he was going to loose his voice. He asked me to give him his remedies. When entering the recording studio, on Rue de l'Élysée, escorted by Tarot, he turned to me and let out: "There is no need to come in." At the end of the program, I went wish him a happy new year anyway.

Our relationship was built on meaningful silences. Words were superfluous between us. This time again he made me understand, without saying anything, that it was his will. Unequivocally. This door he had slammed in my face was a symbolic gesture. I had to draw the conclusions.

At the beginning of January I indirectly learned that the President would have a check scan at doctor Dana's to find out whether the radiotherapy had to be continued. Professor Housset, head of the radiology department at Saint-Louis Hospital, was asked for his opinion. I telephoned Kuyper: "Must I come?" He answered: "No, not at all! The president would be very upset if he saw you."

I wanted to clear the matter up once and for all. I called the Élysée. I asked the President, through his secretary, whether I should be present or not during the examination. The answer came back to me: "He may come, of course." The President arrived with Tarot who obviously ignored everything about the meeting, as well as the role of Professor Housset, whose verdict was expected. He was furious and was walking up and down the room muttering he had been deceived by the President. Had he known, he added, that Housset and Kuyper would be present, he wouldn't have come. He called on me as a witness but I dodged, it wasn't my problem. Then he burst out and began insulting the audience. "What the heck is this scheme? What do you want to do to the President?" Actually, he was particularly desappointed that the rest of the treatment was apparently slipping out of his hands.

The incident occured while the President was in the scanner room. When he left, we agreed that the checkup report would be addressed to the Élysée while I would keep the pictures, as I held all the archives. Two days later I got a phone call from the President, in my office, in the Social Affairs Department. He was calling me to reproach me for keeping the cliches: "Kuyper should have kept them. You were not the recipient." I remained calm, I justified myself. "You wanted me to be present, Kuyper agreed that I kept them." François Mitterrand was becoming more and more unpleasant. "I demand that you give these documents back." Then I changed my tune: "That's enough! If Kuyper wants the pictures, he can ask me for them, I'll give them back to him right away. But for now, that's enough!" And I hung up on him. From that moment on, I never had him on the phone anymore, nor did I ever see him again.

He had his secretary call me up to ask me to go with him during his last official trip (on May 8th and 9th to London, Berlin and Moscow, for the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war). "As what?" I asked. "Not as the President's doctor," the secretary said. "As a personal friend." I refused. This invitation was typical of him. He wanted to attenuate the brutality of our last conversation and he was giving me a wink. He wasn't inviting me in any circumstances: this trip was a bow to his leaving the international scene.

In a long letter, I explained to him my reasons for refusing, alterning warmth -- thanks for the thought -- and coldness -- why would I go to Moscow to attend to the funeral of our relationship? Later, maybe, we would have the opportunity to see each other again. We had to "leave Time some time."

My conclusion sent him back to the author of these lines.

Chapter 12

In 1984, François Mitterrand opened an exhibition on the life of Georges Pompidou, organized by the Paris city hall. The head of state stopped for a long time in front a photograph showing the last cabinet meeting held by the late president. He attentively scrutinized the faces of the men and women grouped around the man who only had a few days to live and whose bloated face carried the stigma of death. This sight seemed to fascinate him. He was also fascinated, that same year, with the sight of Constantin Tchernenko, recent successor of Leonid Brejnev, collapsing before his eyes in a box at the Bolshoi.

Sick statesmen do not resign; they die on stage, always believing that a miracle will return their strength and lucidity. Georges Pompidou's example, which inspired François Mitterrand's vow of openness, haunted the latter during fourteen years. He dreaded being unable to hold on until the end and would never talk about resigning, however dramatic the threats of death. After all, he would have by his side a man, Edouard Balladur, who had already overcome this tragedy and who would, once more, protect the supreme functions of the state.

Twenty years later, the prime minister relived the agony of a president. This discrete man never stated publicly what he had experienced while he was general secretary of the Élysée Palace, one day in March 1994 when Georges Pompidou, overpowered by pain, implored "Leave me alone, I do not want you to see me crying." He was the witness to his physical distress and emotional courage.

In Pitsounda, on the Black Sea where he had met Breznev, Georges Pompidou thought he was really going to die. Professor Vignalou, who took care of him, was so scared that he vowed to tell the truth about the seriousness of the state of his disease upon their return to Paris.

Nothing happened, inasmuch as the physician forgot his promise. During the following three weeks, Georges Pompidou stayed often at home, on the quai de Béthune. He had yet to preside over two cabinet meetings.

At the end of the last one, Edouard Balladur asked him if he knew that the barons of Gaullism were contemplating asking him to tender his resignation. This offended him.

During the hours that preceded his death, on April 2, 1974, he remembered the Easter vacations that he had planned together with his grandchildren in Cajarc, and he told Balladur "Upon my return, I will speak to the French. I have things to tell them." Did he intend to announce his resignation? We will never know.

Edouard Balladur must have remembered more than one memory of this kind during the end of 1994. He found once again the same symptoms: Fingers tapping the table with impatience at very long cabinet meetings, irritability, sensitivity, increasing disinterest in the business of the country. The prime minister is no longer in on the secret like twenty years ago, and he masterminds this government coalition that takes place "in an almost hospitable coziness," according to the formula of psychoanalyst Ali Magoud. He asks himself "What is this strange destiny that makes me the messenger of Thanatos, god of death, son of the night and brother of Hypnos?"

In his book Two Years in Matignon, Edouard Balladur mentions this conflict: "The president's illness played a significant role on what the French made of me in their minds. I did not know anything other than what he told me. He spoke to me often, sometimes precisely. He knew that he could count on my discretion, and that I would not seek to use his physical feebleness to obtain personal or political profit. That would have seemed shameful to me . . . I would add that I would not have been proud of myself if I had attempted to abuse the situation confronting a stricken man."

François Mitterrand observes him from the corner of his eye. These bourbonian airs, this unctuousness, are not part of his style, yet he appreciates them as an artist. Chirac and his gesticulations would have disturbed the end of his languishing reign. Edouard Balladur, unexpected outsider in the war of succession, twists the game and provides additional thickness to the fog surrounding the "chateau."

What does one know about what happens at the Élysée, except for alarming rumors and the touching images of a man who fights "an honorable battle against himself"? On December 31, the news rooms have been alerted: It is said that in his year end wishes to the French the President will announce that he is resigning. On January 6, 1995, he meets the press and talks during two hours with spirit and good humor. He has rarely been so brilliant. Regarding his health, he states: "I will accomplish my duties to the extent that my strength allows me and I have no reason to think that it will not allow me. I do not wish to go into more details regarding my health but I am compelled to answer you. This is a play that I have opened myself and everything is public. I have said that everything would be made public and everything is."

For fourteen years, more or less well-founded media criticism had been expected regarding the sicknesses of heads of state and their performance of their duties. In this respect, Professor Jean Bernard has written an article suggesting that the president of the republic should be regularly inspected by an assembly of physicians, in order to verify his capability for government and to advise the constitutional council thereof. This procedure is terrifying. Lawmakers have foreseen the remedy for a provisional presidential incapacity, and there are constitutional texts on this matter.

On the other hand, what would happen if the president had a stroke, became a paraplegic and despite evident incapacity refused to resign? There are no regulations covering the results that can be expected from the president in the course of his work. He can come every morning to his office and do nothing. Let us be attentive to the span of each word. In November of 1994, I estimated that François Mitterrand was no longer capable of carrying out his duties. He was no longer fulfilling the mandate for which the French people had elected him. At that time, his daily program unfolded around his bed. He would arrive at the Élysée at 9:30 or 10 o'clock in the morning and lie down until lunch time. He had newspapers delivered to him and rarely met with assistants.

Inasmuch as I was one of those who had access to his room, certain advisors would give me an occasional file to submit to him and eventually he literally threw them back to my face. Documents would be passed to him, only to remain unsigned, and letters presenting credentials received no reply. The chief of protocol was desperate. François Mitterrand even received a visiting head of state while lying down in his bed.

He did not work any more because nothing interested him, except for his disease. This focus on himself continued to such an extent that I mused, "If this continues and if it worsens, something will have to be done." I talked about it with Hubert Védrine, who was also scared with by the situation. He would say: "Thank goodness for the coalition!" and would handle things as best he could thanks to his good relationship with Nicolas Bazire, Edouard Balladur's cabinet director.

The prime minister, with discretion and tact, bolted the system. He ably exploited the situation to his benefit, proving that he was up to it. His popularity ratings peaked. The absence of the President served his purpose. Charles Pasqua told me one day, laughing, "If I could put you in jail, that would serve us well." He had introduced me to the other ministers as the best physician in France, so he fancied that without me, the President would not have survived and, given the conjecture, Balladur would have been elected.

This situation lasted several months, from October until the end of the year, and it was felt like a drama at the Élysée. "Should I publish a press release?" I asked Hubert Védrine, who, too encumbered with multiple duties, had not had the time to ask himself the same question. "I wish to give the Élysée an image that is not that of a deathbed," he told me. He did not want it to be known outside that the President did not do anything anymore. In those days, certain ministers would take my arm and tell me, privately, "He is not well. He suffers. Did you know that a new arm-chair has been installed for him to use during cabinet meetings? It is for his back, is it not? He has metastases . . ." Every Wednesday, secret meetings would form to discuss a fixed subject: Would he hold out until the end of his term? Would he not be compelled to resign?

Backstage, "Mitterrand-worship" reached its high point. A person would come to see him, take an arm-chair close to him and talk. He would be lying down and he might answer, or he might not. He slept occasionally, and he would never arise except to have lunch. After that, he would take a nap. There were days when he did not have a single meeting. There were members of his staff who wanted to preserve this bad climate who would "spoil" him terribly, all of which I opposed, as I thought that he ought to be stimulated.

When one entered his room, there were three possible sights: Either he was resting in his bed, wearing a night shirt, making it clear to any unwanted person that he was an annoyance; or he was sitting down, propped up with pillows, reading the newspapers, more accessible but refusing any kind of work; or again he was lying down with a visitor at his pillow, Anne Lauvergeon, his brother Robert or his sister Geneviève Delachenal, carrying on a conversation with him. The only variation was on Wednesdays, when he would dress to attend the cabinet meeting.

What should I do? This kept going around and around in my head. I was very close to going to see Robert Badinter to ask him for advice. I pondered requesting a meeting with Danièle, but gave up that idea. What for? She was out of my horizon. She had changed too! She was now distant, gruff, authoritarian. I had warned her "be careful not to lose your feelings" when she started to resemble her husband in her relationships with others. As for the two children, Gilbert and Jean-Christophe, consulting them was out of the question. They were too distant and too subject to their father's authority, and therefore poor judges.

Finally, I shared my feelings with Christine Gouze-Raynal. She was the only person among the family's friends whom I felt still had her feet on the ground. I gave her a telephone call one evening. On the medical level, she agreed with my point of view. Then I uttered the phrase "Do you think that he is capable of governing?". I felt immediately that I had said something monstrous. It unleashed a torrent of protests that the President had never been as much in mastery of his thoughts, that his intelligence was at all times fully performing and concluded that such a question could not be taken seriously.

Prudently, I backtracked, but I had already crossed the yellow line. One cannot attack with impunity the taboo of infallibility. It was pitiful that a woman of Christine's qualifications was incapable of having an impartial view of the President. Nobody will deny that he had kept all of his intellectual capabilities. All I had wanted to say was that he did not carry out his duties any more. We had entered into the illusion of the speech. Fortunately, there were no major crises at the time.

Christine, Danièle and Roger were after me now. In their eyes, I had become suspect. I had gotten into matters that did not concern me. From then on, I never heard from them again.

Chapter 13

François Mitterrand, in April 1995, drew up a clarification as a result of an article relating the role taken near him by Dr. Jean-Pierre Tarot. It was the only time in 14 years when the head of state asked a member of the press to publish a correction. In this letter, he saluted "the professional and humane qualities" of Tarot, recalled that he could not forget "the merits of Dr. Gubler," but he considered that above all they had been unfair to Philippe de Kuyper and expressed to him all his gratitude. The reason for this initiative didn't stem from a sudden eruption of thankfulness, a sentiment that he rarely experienced, and that he never expressed, but it was simply that Kuyper, vexed to see his rival Tarot glorified by a powerful medium, had threatened to leave if the President wouldn't intervene. The presidential letter illustrated the feud that doctors at his bedside gave themselves up to, worrying about their media representation.

He would pretend to complain that he hadn't been treated like a simple citizen. For me, he had always been an ordinary patient. Apart from the physical equipment inherent to his office, François Mitterrand received the same care as any other Frenchman in his situation. It was in the heads of those who surrounded him that the difference developed. In particular in the family, and more precisely in his brother Robert's, who one day exclaimed, "But in the end, he's the President of the Republic all the same. He must not be treated like just anyone. I don't understand why he wouldn't have all the best specialists at his disposal!" He had had them. Professor Steg and myself can affirm that he has had perfect treatment and that all his opportunities were protected. The reproaches must be addressed to certain members of his family and to several last minute opportunists. They are the ones who have complicated the situation and suggested some debatable choices.

At the end of this adventure, one will ask oneself if it is right to hold back in the matter of information on the health of the head of state. The examples of Pompidou and Mitterrand demonstrate that lies of the state exist and that nothing can remedy that. There is no solution at hand to the problem that is posed by the dissembling of truth in this area. During the 1995 presidential campaign, I sent a message to the two second tour candidates, Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac, advising them to be prudent on the subject and not to make the commitment if they couldn't be certain of the power to hold it. Strong from my experience, I suggested to them not to fall into two extremes: to never say anything at all, or on the other hand to tell all and become the prey of the media, which always demands more information. The presidential office must keep a human dimension. The president is not of divine essence, he is just like each of us.

In the case of François Mitterrand, one will perhaps be surprised that in 1988 I didn't take any initiative to reveal the real state of the President's health, when he was running for his succession, and that only six years later I tried to share my nervousness and disapproval. In 1988, I could only formulate a prediction. No one could be sure whether he could manage to the end of his term. At the end of 1994, I could make a statement of fact. He was no longer in a state to fulfill his duties. Who, amongst his colleagues, friends or parents, could have dared to tell him? Who had all the elements of estimation?

As in the matter of justice, the doctor of a head of state must know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his patient can face his responsibilities. He hasn't the right to be either too reassuring or too alarmist. The duty of information has its limits; one must not betray opinions but avoid political speculation.

Thirty years ago, Lord Moran, doctor of Winston Churchill, provoked a scandal by publishing his memoirs. His peers first reproached him for violating professional secrecy, but finally he was blamed by public opinion for having hidden the pitiful state of health of his illustrious patient. Let's not forget the Yalta conference, which changed the face of the world. Stalin, full of vigor, was faced with two men, of whom one was diminished by age and excess (Churchill) and the other was sick and dying (Roosevelt).

Let us imagine a president still physically well, but developing a pathology which could modify his intellectual abilities, like a neurosis, a psychosis, or a vascular-cerebral inadequacy, etc. Who must reveal it? And what to say? All, or only part? Should one undergo an operation by a reputable neurosurgeon, suffering from cancer, under chemotherapy or radiation therapy? He still seems to have a clear head and perfect movement, therefore one believes him capable of carrying out his work. But perhaps he will not have, in the course of the operation, the ability to make the surgical choices that would be required, lacking lucidity because of fatigue or aptitude. When François Mitterrand, from the depths of his bed which he practically never left, would refuse to sign what one would show him, without even reading it, would that be governing?

To the end of his terms, he stayed out, aggressive, fighting tooth and nail, using his illness to political ends. His televised interview of December 1994 is an illustration of this exploitation. He dramatized his state of health to better send his message on Vichy and his guilty relations. In watching it, one could feel ill at ease.

From 1981, he had made his choice, without the least hesitation. "In any case, no one can say it. It's a secret of state." Thereafter, at regular intervals, came this: "How to reveal it?" Finally, the silence continued. The lesson must be retained.

Footnotes

1. The PSA (Prostatic Specific Agent) is a marker that measures the evolution of the illness in the blood.

2. The gendarmes are police officers who belongs to a special military corp. They are in charge of law and order in rural areas while civil police takes care of urban crime.

3. In French, petite fille means "little girl" and petite-fille means "granddaughter". The two phrases sound exactly the same, thus Gubler's confusion over whether Mazarine was Mitterrand's daughter or granddaughter.