MON DIEU! The rumours behind French president's marriage

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The Gallic Mrs. Robinson behind French President Emmanuel Macron remains an enigma as the deux-some has marched from one scandal to the next.

Vietnam was the scene of their most recent blow-up.

On Monday morning, a video emerged of Brigitte Macron aggressively shoving the face of her husband, the French president.

Almost from the start of their relationship, the couple raised some serious eyebrows. There have been rumours that Macron is, in fact, homosexual. There have also been whispers that Mme. Macron is transgender.

Lately, their 24-year age difference has been the least of their worries. It has been the sordid rumours.

Most painful have been the persistent whispers that Brigitte is a front — a “beard” — to cover up the president’s alleged homosexual relationship with the CEO of Radio France. Macron has vigorously denied the allegations. Behind closed doors, his wife was reportedly crushed.

“This is a woman who has already endured a great deal of pain,” a friend told author Maelle Brun in her kiss-and-tell, Brigitte Macron: An Unfettered Woman.

Still, in 2017, he was elected president of France, the country’s youngest leader ever. Rumours and speculation emerged once more.

“There are times in your life when you need to make vital choices,” she told Elle France. “Of course, we have breakfast together, me and my wrinkles, him with his youth, but it’s like that.”

There were “false” rumours earlier this month, which Macron was forced to deny, that, on a train trip for a state visit in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he snorted cocaine on the journey.

Last summer, two women went on trial in France for claiming the first lady was transgender and had once been a man named “Jean-Michel.” She successfully sued the pair.

Le President was just 15 years old when he met teacher Madame Brigitte Auziere at the Catholic Lycée La Providence in Amiens in northern France. Macron was a classmate of her daughter, Laurence.

Madam Robinson was 39 at the time. However, dodgy as the hook-up was, the age of consent in France is 15.

“At 15, Macron had the maturity of a 25-year-old,” his physical education teacher, Daniel Leleu, told Bloomberg News. “He preferred to spend his time talking with the teachers rather than his classmates.”

Indeed. There are even photos of the teen giving his teacher (and future wife) a big smooch. She was 24 years his elder and married with three children.

Her family discovered the shocking truth in the summer of 1994 when the pair were caught sunbathing in the nude at the home of her parents.

And not for the first time did the couple trigger an uproar. Even in freewheeling France, a sexual affair between the star pupil and his literature and drama teacher was all a bit much.

Her wealthy family owned a chocolate and macaroon factory, and the snickers proved to be an embarrassment. The Auziere family was also flooded with letters of condemnation. Locals spit on the doors of her house.

Brigitte’s banker husband, Andre-Louis Auziere, was not amused and thought his wife’s sex affair with the teen was a “slap in the face.” Their bitter divorce took a decade to resolve.

“From one day to the next, her friends — with whom she was planning a vacation — refused to speak to her,” Brun wrote in her tell-all.

The future grand fromage of France took another view. He was smitten.

“We spoke about everything. And I discovered we had always known one another,” he said.

But the situation was untenable, and he decamped for Paris, 153 kilometres away, where he attended an academically rigorous high school. Yet, as Woody Allen famously said, the “heart wants what the heart wants.”

Distance didn’t dampen the passion he and Brigitte had for each other.

“My head was in a mess,” Brigitte told Paris Match. “I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his (own) age. It didn’t happen.”

Even when he went to university, they were addicted to each other.

“Every Friday after our Spanish lesson, he would run to the train station and jump on the train,” university friend Gaspard Gantzer said of his pal.

Because of her long, dragged-out divorce, the couple weren’t married until 2007. Macron was 29, his bride was 54.

“Each and every one of you is a witness to these last 13 years,” Macron told revellers in a toast to his bride. “And you have accepted us. You have made us what we are today … I want to thank you for loving us the way we are, and I want to thank Brigitte’s children because this has not been easy for them.”

With his sights set on political office, Brigitte quit her teaching job and became her young hubby’s main advisor and muse. He became the finance minister in 2014.

And in December, France was plunged into chaos when its government collapsed.

As for le slap heard around the world, Macron blew off Monday’s incident with his wife, claiming they were merely “squabbling” and “joking.”

He said: “Everyone needs to calm down.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun