The former Italian model, who married the President in February after a high profile three-month romance, said Sarkozy was not upset when she warned him that "this is going to come out."

"Oh, I like this one. Can I have a print of it?" Carla quoted the French president as saying in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine at Elysee Palace in Paris.

The 40-year-old French first lady, admitted she had not fully anticipated the media blitz when she "fell madly in love" with the president.

"My mistake is that I fell madly in love and did not take the measure of how enormous this was going to be," Carla said. She revealed that Sarkozy was so besotted with her that he proposed within weeks of meeting that began when they met at a Paris dinner party.

Carla accepted that her relations with Sarkozy's second wife Cecilia were still strained, but she was on friendly terms with his first wife.

"I would be delighted to meet and have lunch with Cecilia, but I think she is not ready, and Nicolas is not," Carla said, adding "They are still burned by their love, which proves they had a very strong love."

The French first lady, denied rumours that she was already pregnant, insisting her apparently bulging stomach was a "beer belly".

Carla said she has a "dream" of having children with her husband. "If it comes, I'd be the happiest person in the world, but if it doesn't come, I'm not going to tempt the devil," the former Italian model told the US magazine.