Throughout their years together, since their marriage in 1966, Élisabeth and Robert Badinter, who died this Friday, formed a true duo, built on complicity and mutual respect.
Each in his own groove: his pleadings and politics, hers philosophy and feminism.
They only took up the pen together once, in 1988, for a biography of Condorcet, an authentic spirit of the Enlightenment - the historical period that fascinated Élisabeth -, philosopher and politician.
Like a summary of the passions of this couple who have never stopped supporting each other.
“A man who is happy when something happy happens to his wife, for me, he is a feminist,” said Élisabeth in 2016 on France 2, during a rare moment of confidence about her private life.
Because “Mimi” – the nickname given to her by her husband – and Robert although they were in the spotlight, they preferred to keep their garden a secret.
He regularly (re)put the ring on her finger
They meet in the house of Élisabeth's parents, Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, the founder of the giant Publicis, and Sophie Vaillant, the granddaughter of the socialist deputy Édouard Vaillant, in Villennes-sur-Seine (Yvelines).
Robert, one of Publicis' lawyers, is invited to Sunday lunches at the family property.
Freshly divorced from his first wife, the actress Anne Vernon, he falls under the spell of the young philosophy student.
They married on July 1, 1966 at the Victoire Synagogue in Paris.
She was 22, he was 38. In just four years, they had three children, Judith, Simon and Benjamin, who were raised in the large apartment overlooking the Luxembourg gardens where the family moved in 1972.
“Love is like a nine-year lease.
This is why Robert regularly puts the ring on my finger,” confided Elisabeth in “Robert and Elisabeth Badinter, two children of the Republic”, by Alain Frèrejean (Ed. de l’Archipel) who wears four wedding rings on one hand and two on top of each other.
The testimony of a love that has resisted the influence of time.