Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen traded barbs on Monday as they returned to campaigning for the French presidency ahead of a prime-time debate that is likely to prove decisive ahead of Sunday's second-round run-off.
The two rivals held low-key events after a brief Easter pause as they paced themselves before Wednesday's face-off, when the centrist Macron will defend his record over the past five years against his combative far-right rival.
It will be a rematch of their debate in 2017, when the same two finalists clashed at the same stage of the campaign, but which most analysts say was handily won by Macron, who was making his first-ever attempt at public office.
Le Pen, making her third run for the presidency, insists she is better prepared this time around.
"I'm very confident, and I think I'm going to win," the National Rally candidate said during a visit to the sunlit village square in Saint-Pierre-en-Auge in Normandy, western France.
"I hope this debate is carried out calmly... I hope it won't be what I've been hearing for the past week, a series of insults, fake news and excesses," she said.
"She knows her program perfectly, and she knows very well how Macron is going to try to attack her," Le Pen's close ally Louis Aliot, the far-right mayor of Perpignan in southern France, told France Inter radio.
The latest opinion polls suggest that Macron has the edge, giving him scores of 53% to 55.5% against 44.5% to 47% for Le Pen.
But allowing for margins of error, Macron knows there is no room for complacency, and polls have often underestimated the results of far-right candidates in the past -- most notably in 2002, when Le Pen's father Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the presidential run-off against Jacques Chirac.