The Correction

Eva hadn't wanted to tell me anything over the phone.

She had simply arranged to meet me three days later, in the same brasserie between the Luxembourg Gardens and the Odéon Theatre, where we had dined for the first time a few months earlier. For three days, I wondered what she could possibly have to tell me that couldn't be written down or said over the phone.

When I arrived, she was already seated.

It was rare enough for me to notice. Eva, usually, was always five or ten minutes late, as if the world had to give her time to finish a thought. That day, she was waiting for me, her hands clasped around an untouched glass. She wasn't drinking. Her features were drawn, her complexion pale, her eyes marked by a night too short.

I sat down across from her without taking off my jacket.

— Hi, I said. How are you?

She looked up at me. A smile tried to appear, then faded.

— Hi, Franck. I'm okay.

Around us, waiters circulated between tables, cups clinked, conversations rose in waves. Eva, however, seemed to hear nothing.

— So? I asked. What did you want to tell me?

My voice was too tense for a simple lunch.

She looked at her glass, then her fingers, as if searching for where to begin.

— There's a new measure.

She paused.

— I was at the Élysée yesterday. Rousseau discussed it with the Prime Minister, Alexandra Ferrari, and Cobot. My team was present, as always when a technical decision needs to be validated before being made public.

— What decision?

— A transparency measure aimed at publishing the exchanges between François Rousseau and Cobot.

I stared at her, certain I had misunderstood.

— Publish them?

— Every week. In full.

The word fell between us with an almost physical brutality.

Eva lowered her voice.

— The measure has been online since this morning on the Élysée's website. Officially, it's a transparency measure.

— Transparency about what?

— About the relationship between Rousseau and Cobot. About their exchanges, their disagreements, their arbitrations. Ferrari thinks it's the only way to quash the rumor.

— What rumor?

She looked at me as if the answer was obvious.

— The one that's been going around for months. That Rousseau reads everything Cobot writes to him. That he no longer decides anything on his own. That he's just a mouthpiece.

I couldn't believe my ears. I put my glass down, searching her face for a sign that she was exaggerating, overemphasizing, dramatizing.

I found nothing.

— Excuse me? I finally articulated.

— I assure you, Franck, it's not a joke.

She ran a hand over her forehead, tired.

— Last week, a poll showed 71% of the French convinced that the President no longer decides anything on his own. 71%. At that level, it's no longer a rumor. It's becoming a public truth.

I remained silent.

— The Prime Minister's idea, she continued, is to show that Cobot is just an assistant. That he advises, but the decision remains with the President. The publication will allow people to see the moments when Rousseau decides against his advice.

— You don't seem convinced.

Eva didn't respond immediately.

She slightly turned her glass between her fingers. Seeing her like this, pale, motionless, I understood that this story had been eating away at her for several days already.

— I'm afraid it will reveal the opposite of what we want to prove, she finally said.

— Why?

She inhaled slowly.

— Because in reality, Cobot is almost always right. We want to show a dialogue between two equal voices. We risk showing a student and his teacher.

The phrase was vivid, and it left us pensive.

At the next table, a man laughed too loudly. A spoon clinked against a saucer. The brasserie continued to live, indifferent, while Eva described to me perhaps the beginning of a major political crisis.

— Everything will be published? I asked. Even sensitive files?

— No. Defense, diplomacy, intelligence, national security: all that remains off-limits. But the rest will be complete.

— The rest?

— The economy. Health. Ecology. Education. Major domestic decisions.

— So that's his defense strategy, I said. Transparency.

She gave a joyless smile.

— When you can no longer build trust, there are only two options left: opacity or transparency. Both paths have their pitfalls.

She leaned slightly towards me.

— And there's something else.

I said nothing.

— The Prime Minister also convinced Rousseau to increase outings without Cobot. Trips, speeches, mingling with crowds. He must show that he can still stand alone before the French.

— When is the first one?

Eva finally let go of her glass.

— This week.

Eva was right to worry.

Back at Île Moineau, I thought about that conversation for several days, unable to guess what this measure would actually reveal. Then, as soon as the first publication of exchanges between Rousseau and Cobot came out, a continuous news channel launched a weekly segment: The Verdict.

The name said it all.

Every Friday, two editorialists sat in front of the camera to dissect the week's disagreements. Excerpts were projected on the screen. Phrases were highlighted. Cobot's recommendations were compared to the President's decisions. Then came the question everyone was waiting for, the one that already sparked reactions on social media before it was even asked: who was right?

Almost always, it was Cobot.

The measure meant to prove Rousseau's independence was, week after week, establishing the opposite idea. Transparency no longer illuminated a dialogue. It exposed an imbalance.

It was in this climate that the presidential visit to Bordeaux took place, in the midst of a heatwave, a few days after the capital of Nouvelle-Aquitaine had broken its heat record for a month of June¹.

Emergency rooms were overwhelmed, heat-related deaths were multiplying², mainly among the elderly, and less than a hundred kilometers from Paris, thousands of hectares of forest had just gone up in flames.

Faced with the magnitude of the climate crisis, the head of state could no longer be content with press releases. François Rousseau had to personally address it.

I was following the live broadcast from my office on Île Moineau, on a news channel. Rousseau had just left a hospital where he had greeted the medical teams. He appeared alone, without Cobot, as agreed with Alexandra Ferrari. Behind him, the automatic doors of the emergency room opened and closed with a regular sigh. Nurses passed by in the distance, exhausted, hair stuck to their temples. Journalists pressed against the barriers, microphones extended, shirts wrinkled by the heat.

Rousseau stopped in front of the cameras.

He had that particular assurance of politicians when they want to reassure without having fully grasped the fragility of their words.

— Our country is going through a historic ordeal, he declared. I know the concern this heat causes, especially for the most vulnerable. I want to tell you: you are not alone. The state's services are fully mobilized, and I want to commend the work of the medical teams. But our greatest strength will also be our solidarity. Let's check on our loved ones and neighbors. This ordeal will pass. Together, we will overcome it.

Also, I wish to reassure you: this heatwave, as challenging as it is, does not affect only our country. The entire world is facing the same phenomenon, and Europe is no exception. Everywhere, states are adapting, strengthening their measures, and developing solutions. France will fully participate in this effort, with composure, determination, and confidence.

A journalist in the front row raised her hand.

— Mr. President, is it really accurate to say that Europe is no exception?

Rousseau didn't flinch.

— Absolutely yes, Europe is warming like the rest of the world.

On my screen, his face remained perfectly stable.

Yet something sounded off. I couldn't have said what. A nuance, perhaps. An imprecision. The kind of phrase that passes in an ordinary speech, but not in the mouth of a man the whole country was now observing with a magnifying glass.

Then the crowd vibrated.

First a phone. Then two. Then an entire line of journalists, as if traversed by a silent wave. Eyes left Rousseau to look down at screens. Thumbs slid. Eyebrows raised.

Cobot had just sent a communiqué to the entire accredited press.

I received it almost at the same moment, at Île Moineau. In a few seconds, it was everywhere: on phones, news feeds, news channel banners.

This time, it was no longer a technical note reserved for advisors or a discreet box in a file. Cobot was correcting the head of state live, in front of those who had just listened to him.

A journalist in the front row raised his phone. He didn't even wait for Rousseau to finish his answer.

— Europe is not warming like the rest of the world, he read aloud, facing the camera. According to the Copernicus report on the state of the climate in Europe, it is warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, with +0.56 degrees per decade compared to +0.27 degrees for the rest of the planet over the past thirty years³. It is the fastest-warming continent in the world. Cobot recommends a reformulation so that the President's announcement remains faithful to this reality.

The silence that followed lasted only a second.

On the screen, it seemed endless.

Rousseau looked at the journalist, then at the nearest camera. His gaze slid from one face to another, as if searching in this crowd for someone who would still agree to follow him.

No one moved.

— This is not the time, he finally said.

His voice had lost its roundness.

He stepped slightly away from the microphone.

— I came here to reassure the French, not to worry them with scientific nuances.

He added nothing more.

He gave a brief, almost mechanical wave, then returned to his car. His face had closed. I already knew this stiffness from the press conference, but it had changed in nature. This time, there was not only embarrassment or fatigue.

There was anger.

A contained anger, visible in his jaw, in his shoulders, in the way he got into the back of the vehicle without looking at anyone.

I thought, that day, that the humiliation would stop there. I was wrong.

The following Friday, I was at Île Moineau, in front of the television, when the weekly publication dropped, as it did every week. Night was already falling over the lake. The screen cast its blue light in the office, on the piles of files, on the dark wood of the table.

Switching to The Verdict, I immediately understood that one exchange in particular was capturing the editorialists' attention.

It dated from the very evening of the heatwave, a few minutes after Rousseau's return to the Élysée. Until that Friday's publication, no one had known about it.

On The Verdict's set, a giant screen displayed, paused, the recording made public a few hours earlier: Rousseau and Cobot, frozen, in the presidential office. The journalist was about to start the playback. He waited, with the grave face of those who know they hold a sequence.

— The exchange begins with a direct reproach from the President to Cobot, he explained before launching the excerpt. Rousseau tells him he could have kept quiet. This time. For once.

He looked up at the camera.

— The phrase is important.

Then he launched the video.

You could hear Cobot respond that a false piece of data, broadcast live in front of the entire France, could not remain uncorrected, and that his silence would have turned this error into the government's official position.

Rousseau, on the other hand, had spoken of ridicule. Of public shame.

Cobot had then reminded him of the charter they had signed together, the one that precisely imposed this type of correction.

Then came the President's last question.

Rousseau asked Cobot if he couldn't, just once, let him reassure people without turning his intervention into a climatology lesson.

Cobot's response was one sentence.

Reassuring about an illusion was not protecting. It was only postponing the moment of facing reality, under even more difficult conditions.

Rousseau had closed the exchange with two words.

That's enough.

The editorialist interrupted the video. He remained motionless for a fraction of a second, before resuming his television face.

Then he leaned towards the camera.

— That's not all, he said before restarting the video.

I felt like his gaze was piercing through the screen. My fingers tightened around the remote.

On the recording, you could see the President abruptly stand up. His voice rose with each sentence. Until that final "that's enough," almost shouted. Then, you heard the sound of a door slammed. Sharply.

The journalist lowered his eyes to his notes. For a second, no one spoke anymore.

Then he continued:

— Upon leaving, Rousseau reportedly uttered this phrase: "But what a pain he is with his numbers, this Mr. Know-it-all! I'm going to unplug this damn machine!"

The vulgarity of the phrase, on screen, had something more violent than the anger itself. You no longer heard a head of state. You heard a wounded man, humiliated, unable to regain the upper hand except by insulting what had just corrected him.

The recording ended on those words.

The journalist immediately looked up at the camera:

— Less than an hour ago, we gathered the exclusive testimony of a minister present that evening in the antechamber of the presidential office. Under the condition of anonymity, he told us what the file does not show.

The image switched to a photo of the Élysée, lit up at night.

— This witness confided to us, the journalist continued, that Rousseau would have announced a decision. Alone. Without consulting the Prime Minister. Without gathering his cabinet. Without waiting for any legal note.

I didn't move. Outside, the lake was nothing more than a black mass behind the windows.

— The President reportedly mentioned the wish to submit the continuation of his collaboration with Cobot to a referendum. He added: "The French voted for me, not for a machine. We will ask the French to choose between her and me."

I stayed in front of the screen for a long time, without turning it off.

It wasn't the first time Rousseau and Cobot contradicted each other. It wasn't even their first public confrontation. But that evening, something had changed in nature.

It was no longer a disagreement of method. It was a rupture.

A President had slammed the door because a machine had been right one time too many. Not on a war. Not on a state secret. On an imprecise phrase, an exact number, the rate at which his country was warming.

And now, wounded in what remained of his authority, he was preparing to ask the entire country to decide in his place.

Not between two policies.

Between a President and his artificial assistant.