Sainte Carla and the tramp - a helpful Parisian story

Rather conveniently, given the growing media comment in France about how their First Lady appears "disengaged" with the French people, a Parisian tramp has popped up to say that Carla Bruni often gives him €50 or  €100 when she passes him on the street. Not only that, she stops to chat about music and has offered to put him up for a month in a hotel.

"I refused," said 53-year-old Denis. "It's not that I enjoy being in the street but I've got my habits... What's more, Carla gave me a military-type duvet, which keeps me warm."

Denis sleeps rough in the chic 16th arrondissement where Bruni lives when she's not at the Elysee Palace. He was tracked down by the magazine Closer after Bruni mentioned him in an interview she gave to Macadam, a magazine sold by the homeless in Paris, equivalent to the British Big Issue.
 
According to Denis, Bruni recently gave him a signed copy of her CD. "My friends from the street told me that as [the CD] has got her signature, it's worth a lot of money. I couldn't care less, I prefer to keep it," he said. "Having said that I lent it to someone two months ago who hasn't given in back."

More useful to Denis than the CD is the fact that the gendarmes have stopped moving him on since his high-powered connection was revealed. "Carla's help is concrete. Before knowing her, the cops bugged me regularly, now they leave me alone," he said. "She's a great lady, you know, Carla, even if she doesn't appear to be."

Aaaah... And to think that only a few weeks ago she was being criticised by another magazine, Point de Vue, for being as out of touch with ordinary French people as Louis XVI's wife Marie Antoinette, guillotined in 1793 at the height of the French revolution. It looks as if Carla will be spared the blade after all. ·