PARIS – Will the real Cecilia Sarkozy please stand up? Or at least, France is asking, could she please decide on whether she wants the job of first lady of the republic?

Will she be the Mrs. Sarkozy who snubbed a lunch with the American president’s family due to a “sore throat,” only to be seen shopping with friends the next day? Or will she be the Mrs. Sarkozy who flew to Libya to meet Colonel Muammar Gadhafi to help secure the release of six medics accused of infecting children with HIV (and in doing so help secure French trade)?

Tongues wagged after her husband, President Sarkozy, arrived alone — and almost an hour late — at President Bush’s family retreat in Maine on Saturday for the hot-dog and hamburger lunch. After she was seen out and about on Sunday, they went into overdrive. “Cecilia set a new record for making a swift recovery,” France Inter radio said yesterday.

“With every day that passes, the mystery deepens: Who is Cecilia Sarkozy?” Le Telegramme said. “What does the wife of the president want? To live her life as she likes? In which case, why does she accept invitations, like that made personally by Laura Bush?”

“People will no doubt accuse us of making too much of these absences,” Charente Libre, a regional daily, said. “But, without doubt, we would have paid less attention to this American episode if it hadn’t been for the fact that Cecilia was so obviously prominent in Tripoli, at the request of her husband the president.”

Mr. Bush said he was “disappointed” but understanding after Mrs. Sarkozy, 49, called Mrs. Bush from the Sarkozy holiday home in nearby New Hampshire at the last minute to excuse herself.

It was not the first time she had turned protocol on its head: at her husband’s first G–8 summit in June, she left other first ladies midway through, saying that she had to prepare a birthday party for her daughter.

The Elysée says her role will be become clearer by the autumn.