After nude photographs of her taken 15 years ago in her modelling days had appeared in some British newspapers, it was the duty of the First Lady of France yesterday to look demure. Carla Bruni Sarkozy acquitted herself well.

Dressed in a grey Dior outfit with matching pillbox hat, Mrs Sarkozy looked elegant in a particularly French way. The backdrop of an old Victorian train shed at the formal arrival of the President and his wife in Windsor helped no end to emphasise her chic.

The Sarkozys began their whirlwind two-day state visit, the first by a French head of state in a decade, at Heathrow, where they were met by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, but where the only ceremony was a chivalrous kiss planted by the Prince on the back of Mrs Sarkozy’s black gloved hand. She seemed to appreciate the gesture.

They led a ten-car motorcade in one of the Queen’s two state Bentleys, a large Tricolour fluttering on its roof, to the welcoming dais on a pavement besides Windsor’s Riverside station. It is not the grandest of venues, but 100 troopers of the Household Cavalry lined up across the street helped to create a sense of colour and occasion.

Mr Sarkozy, in a dark blue overcoat, emerged from his car and shook hands with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. Mrs Sarkozy followed, giving the Queen a deep curtsy, but offering the Duke only a handshake. All four stood in line for a spirited rendition of La Marseillaiseby the mounted band of the Household Cavalry.

The President stood to attention, but could not resist looking round while his wife seemed unsure whether to hold her handbag in front of her with both hands or keep it by her side in her right hand. The Queen, of course, is an old hand at handbags. It just hangs off her wrist and behaves itself.

With all four principals lined up together, strange size discrepancies became apparent. Mr Sarkozy, despite built-up shoes, was only marginally taller than the Queen, while Mrs Sarkozy, wearing flat shoes to diminish her four-inch height advantage over her husband, found herself exactly eye to eye with the Duke.

It was over in less than five minutes. As the gilded Australian State Coach emerged from a side street to take the Queen and the President to the castle, Mrs Sarkozy caught his wife’s eye and appeared to say to her: “Hey, look at this.”

Mrs Sarkozy and the Duke followed in the marginally less ornate Scottish State Coach, in which they were seen to be engaged in animated conversation. Three open landaus followed, carrying the rest of the French suite, the last bearing the president’s newly-acquired mother-in-law, Marisa Borini-Tedeschi, in a purple dress with matching headband. Only ladies of a certain age, even if French, can get away with wearing purple.

In the third landau rode two of the Sarkobabes, powerful young women recruited by the President as cabinet ministers in the manner that Tony Blair once did.

After a ceremonial drive through the streets of Windsor accompanied by a Sovereign’s Escort of the Household Cavalry and watched by a sizeable crowd, the procession arrived in the castle quadrangle for an inspection of the guard of honour drawn up by the Grenadier Guards. As the President and the Duke stepped out to survey the troops, Mrs Sarkozy made to follow them, but a quick word from her husband reminded her that this was men’s work. She stayed behind on the dais, chatting to the Queen and still smiling a lot.

A small breach of protocol briefly intruded into the otherwise immaculate scene. Mrs Sarkozy, as befits a former model, had brought her personal photographer but he trespassed on to guard of honour territory and had to be forcibly removed, virtually by the scruff of the neck, by a senior Royal Household official. “We will be having words,” a Buckingham Palace source said darkly.

Fortified by a private lunch in the castle, the two heads of state and their spouses repaired to the Red Drawing Room for the customary exchange of gifts. The Queen gave Mr Sarkozy, a keen philatelist, framed blocks of British and French stamps issued in 2004 to mark the centenary of the Entente Cordiale. She also made him an honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bar. Mrs Sarkozy had to be content with a miniature carriage clock.

Knowing the Queen’s love of horses, the President arrived bearing equine gifts, including a Lalique crystal sculpture of two horses and a book on horse care written in 1743 by Louis XV’s general inspector of horses. The Duke got a bronze of a hunting dog.

Arranged for the visitors’ inspection were items from the Royal Collection relating to visits to Queen Victoria by King Louis-Philippe in 1844 and Emperor Napoleon III in 1855. The Duke plied the president with anecdotes about carriage driving, but Mrs Sarkozy, although still smiling, appeared nervous and said nothing.

The visitors then left Windsor to lay a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey to address Parliament and to meet party political leaders, returning later to Windsor for a state banquet.

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