Carla Bruni’s long break feeds pregnancy rumours

The Elysee Palace refused to comment today on rumours that France's First Lady, Carla Bruni, is pregnant. "We have nothing to say about this," a spokesman for President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters. He did not deny it.

The rumours began when it became clear Bruni had vanished to the Cote d'Azur for a month to stay with her mother, and the gossip increased over the weekend after President Nicolas Sarkozy's millionaire friend, Jacques Seguela, told journalists in Paris that the couple wanted to start a family.

Seguela said: "Nicolas and Carla are very keen to have a child. Carla has admitted as much on a number of occasions, otherwise I would not be allowed to say this.

"Everyone knows about it now. They are a young couple, and like all young couples, they want to start a family."

It has also been mooted that Sarkozy believes a baby might increase his chances of re-election in the 2012 presidential election, just as the Blairs were given a boost by the birth of Leo in 2000.

If Bruni, 41, does have a baby, it will be her second child. She has a nine-year-old boy called Aurelian with philosophy professor Raphael Enthoven, who, despite being her immediate ex, is said to be a regular at the Sarkozys' dinner table.

Sarkozy has three children - two sons in their twenties, Pierre and Jean, from his first marriage to Marie-Dominique Culioli, and a 12-year-old, Louis, from his second marriage to Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz.

It was following the break-up with Cecilia that Jacques Seguela introduced Sarkozy to Bruni at a private dinner. Within three months of their blind date they were married.

Bruni's vanishing act - she last performed an official engagement on September 25 - was mentioned in last week's cover story in the French magazine Point de Vue. It came up not in terms of a hush-hush pregnancy - but as an example of her laziness in an article comparing her to Marie Antoinette.