For a few days, the fan will have succeeded in eclipsing his idol.
In this spring when France must commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of Napoleon, who disappeared in Saint Helena on May 5, 1821, it is one of its most flamboyant admirers who makes headlines.
After the broadcast of a video on Friday on M 6, Pierre-Jean Chalençon is targeted by a criminal investigation which will have to establish "if the evenings were organized in ignorance of the sanitary rules and to determine who were the possible organizers and participants".
Despite the report's disguised voiceover, the art collector was quickly identified.
Just like the Palais Vivienne (Paris IIe), which Chalençon acquired in 2015 to make it a den dedicated to Napoleon.
In M 6's document, we hear him boast: “
I had dinner this week in two or three restaurants which are supposedly underground restaurants, with a certain number of ministers.
So that makes me laugh softly.
We are still in a democracy.
We do what we want.
"On condition, already, to pay attention to what one says ...
Known to the general public thanks to "Deal concluded"
Monday, while the controversy was unleashed, the French discovered - for those who did not know him - the face of the troublemaker.
Long blond curly hair à la Polnareff, scruffy and shimmering look, golden bagouses on the fingers and grumpy patter ... The whimsical 50-year-old collector, long recognized as a pillar of the Napoleonic universe, had made himself known to the great public from 2017, thanks to the auction program "Affaire concluded" on France 2. He was enthroned among other experts gathered around Sophie Davant, but it was above all him, in the role of the cultivated foufou, who took the light.
READ ALSO>
Portrait: Pierre-Jean Chalençon, the Emperor's madman
As soon as his name was associated with the scandal, the great retreat from Russia began for General Chalençon.
Sunday evening, through the voice of his lawyer, he pleaded “humor” and “a sense of the absurd”.
Twenty-four hours later, the collector, also suspected of organizing parties at the Vivienne Palace despite the sanitary restrictions, awkwardly tried to justify himself to Cyril Hanouna: "I haven't had a kitchen for 4 months so I don't know. not how I could have made parties.
»On the clandestine dinners with ministers?
“Never,” he swore.
I have the impression that they are trying to use my name to bring down the government!
".
Nothing less.
Caviar, champagne, menus from top chefs and compulsory mask removal ... Our journalists were able to enter these high standing clandestine parties which are currently being held in Paris.
🎥 @ frvignolle Armelle Mehani and @CyrielleStadler exclusively for 📺 # 19h45 pic.twitter.com/ClXpIWrVwZ
- M6info (@ m6info) April 2, 2021
The next day on BFMTV
,
he again went fishing for justifications, this time congratulating himself on "the biggest April Fools in the last ten years".
Rebelote this Wednesday at the Grandes gueules of RMC, where he claimed to be "spiritual son" of Le Luron, Coluche or Desproges.
“Today, we forgot the humor (...) I said that I saw ministers.
I could also have said that I had dinner with Martians!
"
His friends, seeing him sink into the quicksand of justification, did not scramble to defend him.
The fear, perhaps, of being seen as potential guests at the forbidden parties he would have organized (if the investigation shows it however).
Journalist Nelson Monfort - who has not been to the palace “underground” - is not afraid to go to the net.
“I'm sorry for what happened to him.
Everything is igniting so quickly today ... Pierre-Jean is above all a passionate and fascinating man.
The collector is serious, admirable;
the man is flamboyant, sometimes extravagant.
Small overflows are part of his style.
This regrettable controversy should not mask the consideration it deserves.
"
"Megalo, like the emperor!"
"
Stéphane Bern, who will present with Lorànt Deutsch an issue of “Let yourself be guided” devoted to Napoleon next Tuesday on France 2, is more nuanced.
“He's a rather sympathetic and whimsical boy, but his thirst for media recognition doesn't always make him measure the significance of what he says.
It's already played tricks on him, and I'm afraid this last outing will cost him dearly.
Pity.
If we weren't talking about health risks here, he would be almost more to be pitied than to blame.
"More acidic, another of his occasional traveling companions describes" a brilliant man who beautifully restored the Vivienne Palace.
But notoriety and television have taken all filter away from it.
He is ready to tell anything, out of need to exist or out of play. Megalomaniac, like the emperor!
"
Politics Newsletter
Our analyzes and indiscretions on power
Subscribe to the newsletterAll newsletters
For a year, the small empire of Chalençon, at the head of one of the most important private collections in the world on Napoleon (more than 2,000 pieces collected since he was 17), has been struggling.
As he confided to the Parisien Week-end last November, the Covid does not do the business of the Palais Vivienne, acquired 6 million euros in 2015. “I have twenty years of reimbursement on the back, I took life. .
He can no longer count on paid visits and - a fortiori - on festive evenings billed at a high price under the gilded paneling of this 18th century mansion.
Line Renaud: "He was very mean to me"
Would the health pressure have made him lose his footing?
Last June, two cases came to extinguish his television adventure.
Photos of him posing with the controversial Dieudonné at a birthday party given by Jean-Marie Le Pen two years earlier have circulated.
Especially since, a few days earlier, he had insulted Line Renaud on Twitter.
While she was paying homage to her godson Johnny Hallyday, he replied: "When will you join him?"
»His apologies did not soften the singer.
“I don't want to talk about this gentleman.
He was very mean to me, ”she is content to answer the Parisian.
#chalancon I don't like Line Renaud but that, I find it filthy 😱 pic.twitter.com/jb4wrBDyY5
- MeRevoilou (@MRevoilou) April 7, 2021
Suffice to say that in the hushed world of academics, the auction specialist is not always popular.
They meet him, many find him "sympathetic" like the historian Jean Tulard.
But like Thierry Lentz, director of the influential Fondation Napoléon, many others are cautiously keeping their distance.
“We don't see him very much.
He has a real talent for buying and selling, he has put together a great collection.
But he talks a lot sometimes, and we historians prefer to remain dull, ”slips this specialist in the Consulate and the First Empire.
Another abounds, this time anonymously, and predicts "the next stop of the merry-go-round": "He is pulling the blanket too much.
It's silly because it casts a veil on the quality of his collection.
In this bicentennial year, he is especially very frustrated not to be at the center of the commemorations.
"
Between slippages and business slowed down by the Covid, the year has been hard for Pierre-Jean Chalençon.
By anathematizing ministers, he may have committed the fatal edge fault, by becoming persona non grata, he who readily appears with those who matter.
“This story of ministers thrown away for free, it's lamentable, squeals a government adviser.
Given the general dissatisfaction of the French, and the very tense climate, each sentence of this kind triggers stupid storms, stirred up by the extremist parties.
Since Monday, several ministers of weight have gone up to the front in the radios to defend their probity.
Around Brigitte Macron, with whom Chalençon says he is close and talks regularly by phone, barrier gestures are in order.
“They saw each other at certain events but never face to face.
Clearly, they are not intimate.
Since 2017, it's crazy how many people claim to be friends with the first lady, ”quips an advisor from the Palace.
“This time, feared a television personality, he really burned himself.
And it was not in the Austerlitz sun.
