“If we put our stories up on the Internet, who would buy the paper on Wednesday?” he said. “We believe in print.”

FRANCE’S large daily newspapers are flailing. Le Monde’s circulation has been declining. The left-leaning Libération, the same. Le Figaro is seen as the mouthpiece of the right and is not doing any better. But Mr. Angeli’s Canard Enchaîné — a mix of investigative pieces, facetious opinion pieces, fictitious columns by politicians and no advertising — is seen as lacking a political bent. Its circulation has risen 32 percent since the diminutive Nicolas Sarkozy took office in 2007 and was nicknamed by the newspaper “Sarkoléon.”

Why the surge in readers? Mr. Angeli shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says.

But he does believe that government workers have such a low opinion of Mr. Sarkozy that there are more leaks than usual. And then there is Mr. Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, a former model and singer, an easy target for satire.

The paper runs a fictitious diary called “Le Journal de Carla B” each week. In it, she refers to Mr. Sarkozy as Chouchou, an endearment akin to little darling. During the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it had her fretting that her vacations were about to be ruined: “My little swims with Chouchou in front of paparazzi stuck up with oil just like the pelicans! Obama, do something!”

Mr. Angeli did not start out with any intention of becoming a journalist. He was born outside of Paris, his father was a gym teacher and he spent his early 20s playing volleyball. Then, he joined the Communist Party, where his contemporaries included Bernard Kouchner, who went on to found Doctors Without Borders. But soon, Mr. Angeli was disillusioned and got a job at Le Nouvel Observateur, where Jean-Paul Sartre, among others, plied the trade.

“I learned by being edited,” Mr. Angeli said. “I would write, and they would rewrite. It is a good way to learn.”

When a photographer arrived to take his picture, he looked embarrassed. Asked to sit in an armchair below a wall of cartoons, he refused. “I’ll look pompous,” he said.