L’Amour fait passer le temps,
le temps fait passer l’amour.

Ah, yes, I remember it well:

 French Lessons
Sarkozy’s win is a pedagogical windfall for the GOP.

 On May 16, Sarkozy will move into the Elysée Palace and the despised Jacques Chirac will move into hiding. Between now and then, the brain-fatigued legions of the Left — smaller in number than ever — will take to the streets, as they already did last night around the Place de la Bastille and elsewhere, in an effort to make their political ideas a little more concrete, literally. As Royal promised, her defeat has already unleashed violence — 367 burned cars, 270 arrests, according to France 24.

Between now and the legislative elections in June — elections Sarkozy must win in order to implement the reforms he’s promised — most of the streets of Paris will become unpaved ruts, the mob-ruled suburbs will once again make parking easy to find and the dullards in the press will make cheap shots about his height and draw inane parallels with Napoleon. But one reason people turned out in record numbers to vote this time in France was because they’re tired of this, tired of a country ruled by élitists and their spoiled children, government-employed Marxists and sundry Trotskyites demanding handouts in return for civic tranquility. As I watched the votes being counted in one of the small villages not far from where I live, a man said to me, “Perhaps now it will be different.” If the Republicans learn from Sarko, in 2008 Americans might be saying the same.

Well, yes and no:

If the Paris meeting in March between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain resembled a warm embrace, Friday’s hookup of Sarkozy and Barack Obama fell just short of hot love. After trading compliments and endearments during an hour-long press conference in the Elysee Palace, the pair wound their session down with Sarkozy coming as close as possible to endorsing Obama for the U.S. presidency without actually doing it. "I wish Barack Obama luck — if it’s him, France will be very happy," Sarkozy responded to a question asking whether his ebullient praise of Obama was an endorsement. Referring to his initial 2006 meeting with Obama in Washington while Sarkozy was preparing his run for the French presidency, the Frenchman recalled, "There were just the two of us in the room, and one became President. Now it’s up to the other to do likewise."

Sure, Sarkozy hedged his bet a bit, qualifying his comments as not "meddling" in the decision of U.S. voters (some of whom have very little love of the French). He noted that if the White House were won by "another, France will be a friend to the United States" — a conciliatory move to McCain, his best friend from March. Yet Sarkozy’s praise of Obama throughout the press conference made his admiration of the probable Democratic candidate more than obvious — including an apparent allusion to the older McCain. "We have the right to be interested in a candidate who is looking to the future, not backwards at the past," Sarkozy said of Obama’s campaign.

This reminds me of an old French saying:

Scratch a lover, find a cheese-eating surrender monkey.