Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is not keen to see her husband President Nicolas Sarkozy run for a second term in office, worried that the job might damage his health, the French first lady told Figaro Magazine.

“As a spouse, I do not wish for it. Maybe I am afraid that his health will be affected. Maybe I want to live what time we have left together in a certain peace,” she said.

“But whatever the situation and whatever my husband decides, I will quietly accept it,” she added, according to an advance copy of the interview released ahead of Saturday’s publication.

Sarkozy’s father Pal also suggested the president might find life more relaxing as a private citizen.

“He will be the one to decide,” Pal Sarkozy told the daily Le Parisien. “But personally, I think he would have a much more peaceful and much more comfortable life if he didn’t run.”

“This is an opinion of a father who loves his son … and who would like to see him happy,” he said.

Sarkozy came to power in 2007 and is expected to run for a second term in 2012, although he has yet to confirm this.

However, his poll ratings are hovering near record lows and his UMP party suffered a humiliating rout at a regional ballot this weekend, raising doubts for the first time over whether he would stand for re-election if his fortunes did not revive.

WHIRLWIND ROMANCE

Bruni and Sarkozy married in 2008 after a whirlwind romance, but there was wild media speculation earlier this month that their marriage was in difficulty after a French blog reported rumours that both Bruni and her husband were having affairs.

“I despise so-called journalists who use blogs as if they were a credible source,” Bruni told Figaro Magazine.

Bruni once described herself as a “man tamer” and has had a number of affairs with intellectuals and rock stars, including Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton.

She has often been quoted as saying, in a 2007 interview, that she was “crazily bored by monogamy”, but the former supermodel said she treasures her marriage to Sarkozy.

“He is someone who protects me from myself and the world. He is maybe the first man who protects me,” she said.

“The intimate part of our life is hard to describe without immodesty,” she said, adding: “It is the first time that I give as much as I get.”

A successful singer-songwriter with a string of albums to her name, Bruni said that she was working on a new record and that she missed performing.

She also confirmed that she was set to appear in a Woody Allen movie, due to be filmed in Paris this summer, but she does not yet know what role she will play.

((Reporting by Thierry Leveque, writing by Geert De Clercq and Sophie Taylor))