On this morning of September 30, 2019, the crowded Saint-Sulpice church (Paris Ve), in the square invaded by the crowd, awaits the solemn arrival of Jacques Chirac's coffin for the religious funeral of the late Head of State.
Suddenly, under the nave, a growl emerges from the hubbub.
"But when is he coming?"
It is Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who died on Wednesday at the age of 94, the longtime enemy brother, who is growing impatient.
According to "L'Express", the former president would have even been rougher: "Chirac was always late, well, it continues!
He would have blurted out.
Already, the day of the death of this former Prime Minister (1974-1976) who caused him so much torment, VGE was distinguished by the drought of its reaction.
While the political class, unanimous, multiplied the emphatic tributes, he had limited himself to a dry and agreed statement.
These laurels braided to the man he held, his life, for the true responsible for his defeat of 1981 by having campaigned secretly for Mitterrand would have "very crumpled Giscard", according to a confidant.
Ah!
Giscard and Chirac, Chirac against Giscard… One of the bloodiest and longest fratricidal wars on the right.
The faithful Chiraquien Jean-Louis Debré never tired of telling, by imitating their phrasing, how the two old crocodiles, when they sat together on the Constitutional Council at the twilight of their careers, bickered in sessions like college students.
Chirac ordering a beer aloud while Giscard spoke, the second clinking his spoon in his tea when the first spoke.
One mocking the blunder of the dissolution, the other insisting on the second term at the Elysee Palace that he had managed to win.
In Saint-Sulpice, we heard a senator slip to his neighbor (from "Le Monde"): "Now, Giscard and Balladur can die, they have buried their worst enemy.
"
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, president, and Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister, aboard the aircraft carrier Clemenceau in 1976./Rue des Archives / AGIP
Between the two men, whom only six years separated - but Giscard, the eldest, born in 1926, had fought at the end of the Second World War -, it all started with a pact… of treason.
On the premature death of Georges Pompidou, Chirac, rising star of Gaullism and foal of the late president, rallied 43 UDR deputies (ancestor of the RPR, the UMP and LR) to the candidacy of the centrist VGE.
At the same time, pulling the rug under the feet of the natural Gaullist candidate for the May 1974 presidential election, Jacques Chaban-Delmas.
As a reward, the young wolf obtained Matignon.
At the beginning, this executive tandem, cutting edge by its youth and its dynamism over the years of Gaulle-Pompidou, blows a wind of reform on the country.
But the disagreement quickly emerges.
"These two were made not to get along", summarizes the writer Denis Tillinac, intimate of Chirac.
The president, a big bourgeois with aristocratic manners, rather liberal in economics and, above all, a convinced European, wants to make France the engine of Europe, undertakes with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt the construction of a common European currency.
Its Prime Minister, leader of the Gaullist party, then stands (he will change often…) on a more social line, even speaks of "French labor".
Above all, he is hostile to Europe.
Chirac humiliated in Brégançon in 1976
A difference in ideology, a difference in style too.
If Chirac, deep down, admires VGE's intellectual brilliance, he hardly conceals his contempt.
"In his scale of values, at the very top, there was himself, then nothing, and finally me, far below", confided Jacques Chirac in his Memoirs.
The latter dates his decision to break with the famous episode of Brégançon, at Pentecost in 1976. The president, who invited the Chirac couple to the fort Var for a relaxing stay, would have humiliated his Prime Minister.
Especially at dinner, where Jacques and Bernadette, in tuxedos and long dresses, sat in their narrow chairs with the president's ski instructor and his wife, pulling, embarrassed, on her too short skirt, while their hosts sat enthroned in comfortable armchairs. .
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This is in any case what will tell Chirac, who, at the time, seeks above all a pretext to leave Matignon.
The following summer, he resigned.
"I will perhaps open a painting gallery", he retorts, madre, to Giscard who questions him about his projects during their last tête-à-tête at the Elysee Palace.
"One thing is certain, you will never hear from me again!
He says, leaving the room.