Olivier Dassault had at heart the passion for France.
His grandeur, his prestige, his influence: these words, he never pronounced them lightly.
An Air Force officer, heir to a name he proudly claimed, he had a sense of service written deep in his genes.
From France, but also from the French: these simple citizens, these often very modest voters, whom he worked - from electoral offices to field visits - to resolve daily difficulties with that discreet naturalness and that basic simplicity that everyone recognized in him. .
He was at their side on Friday when the Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior visited the sensitive areas of Beauvais.
It is again them that he was preparing to join this Sunday when the absurd brutality of fate decided otherwise.
A right-wing man, an assumed liberal, carrying high the spirit of conquest and the values of the company, Olivier Dassault, certainly, did not put his flag in his pocket.
But he was too jealous of his freedom and too respectful of that of others to impose his convictions.
In politics, this hypersensitive had a sense of friendship, not party spirit.
Engineer, airplane pilot, film producer, entrepreneur, politician, musician, photographer recognized throughout the world ... he will have cultivated all his gifts;
in all areas he will have excelled.
All this without weighing or posing, with a disarming kindness, a false nonchalance, a spontaneous elegance.
He was made for happiness.
He was made for life
Olivier Dassault loved the great outdoors where dreams unfold.
He loved the sky.
He loved the sea. He loved the long approach walks at dawn and the hides at dusk.
He loved flowers, trees, good wine and friends.
He was made for happiness.
He was made for life.
He has never ceased, with great respect for his editorial independence, to lavish
benevolent and friendly encouragement
on
Figaro
.
Its sudden disappearance leaves us in the sorrow.
To his wife, Natacha, to his three children, Héléna, Rémi and Thomas, we offer, on behalf of all the employees of the Figaro Group, our saddened condolences.