The French are masters of cordial loathing, elegantly tearing each other apart with phrases said and unsaid. But it's rare you see such a striking example as the one provided by President Jacques Chirac earlier this week when he announced that conservative presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy would be stepping down from his post as interior minister.

Sarkozy, who was once Chirac's protégé, betrayed him in 1995 by backing the bid of another Gaullist, Édouard Balladur, for the presidency. Then Chirac won.

Although Sarkozy eventually maneuvered his way back into government after 2002 as interior minister, finance minister and again as interior minister, the animosity between him and Chirac was never well concealed.

The president may have hoped that the cabinet positions he assigned to Sarkozy ultimately would diminish the young contender's credibility. It was obvious that Chirac favored the elegant, polyglot, poetic, and very tall everything-that-Sarko-is-not Dominique de Villepin, whom he made foreign minister and prime minister. But it was Villepin who burned out after mass protests last spring. Sarkozy's ambitions lived on as he wrested control of Chirac's own party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), away from the president.

So this is what Chirac had to say by way of endorsement in his brief remarks as he noted that Sarkozy was stepping down from the cabinet (at last) to devote himself full time to campaigning.

"Five years ago, I called for the creation of the UMP to allow France to pursue a rigorous policy of modernization in the long term," said Chirac. "In all its diversity, this political movement chose to support the candidacy of Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election, because of his qualities. So it is very natural that I will bring him my vote and my support."

The great British poet Alexander Pope would have been proud to see a modern politician embrace so thoroughly and with such skill the description of hypocrisy he penned in 1735:

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.

More expressive even than the president's words, however, was the picture (above) of Chirac and Sarkozy published the day of the announcement.

Photo by Reuters