In a week spent in Paris at the end of 1876 Sir Charles stayed with Gambetta, and took occasion to bring about a meeting between him and Sir William and Lady Harcourt, who were also in Paris. With Sir William Harcourt was his son and inseparable companion Mr. Lewis Harcourt, who recalls a day when Sir Charles said to him: "Now, Loulou, I want you to come and have lunch with me by yourself; I'm not asking your father and mother to-day." He remembers his pride in going off to the Café Anglais, where they were met by a man with a big black beard. "This, Loulou, is Monsieur Gambetta." The two men talked, and the boy listened, as he was well used to do, for in those days he constantly "ran about beside his father like a little dog." After lunch they went for a drive, and still the men talked, and Gambetta pointed to the window from which he had proclaimed the Republic, and Dilke showed where he had lain for half a day while the French troops were besieging the French of Paris. The boy listened eagerly—to understand, years after, how the whole drive had been planned for his edification and delight.
Since August, 1876, Gambetta had been talking of a visit, proposing, says Sir Charles, to "come to me in town, and probably bring Challemel-Lacour also to 76, Sloane Street." The visit was to be purely private and social; "he will receive no deputations, no addresses, and will visit no provincial towns."
'It was in 1876 that he sent to me a certain Gérard, who became French reader to the Empress Augusta of Germany, and it is supposed that the somewhat brilliant volume called The Society of Berlin, long afterwards published under the name of Count Paul Vasili by Madame Adam (although not the later volumes of the same series, which were by Vandam), was from Gérard's pen. Gambetta, when he came to power as Prime Minister, appointed Gérard, who was then in the Legation at Washington, his private secretary, Georges Pallain being the second, and Joseph Reinach the third. But Pallain and Reinach, in fact, exercised the functions, because Gambetta fell before Gérard arrived. Gérard is now (1909) an Ambassador.'
Just before Dilke's visit to Gambetta in the spring of 1877 another indication of his popularity in France occurred. 'Gavard had come to me from the French Embassy to ask me whether I should like to go to Paris with Sir Louis Mallet to arrange a new French Treaty, as "his Government would like me."' The proposal fell through. As Sir Charles said, 'the Government could not well, I think, have sent two Liberals at the head of the Commission.' Mallet
'was a very experienced official, not, however, very successful at the Board of Trade, and greatly given to grumble and growl. He held the mildly reciprocitarian views in which he followed Mill and expanded Cobden's opinions, and was thought by us to be the author of the Letters of a Disciple of Richard Cobden, the circulation of which by the Cobden Club, at his own request, nearly destroyed that institution. He afterwards left the Board of Trade for the India Office, where he became permanent Under-Secretary of State, on which occasion Grant Duff said, "Mallet will be happy now. He will have two worlds to despair of;" for he generally began each sentence with the words, "I despair," uttered in a deep voice.'
On April 10th, 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, which seemed as if it might involve all the Great Powers, is this entry of a dinner with the French Minister:
'Went to dine with Gavard, meeting his second and third secretaries, the Italian first secretary, the Dutch Minister (Baron de Bylandt), the Belgian Minister (Solvyns), and "The Viper" (alias Abraham Hayward, Q.C.). Cypher telegrams poured in all through dinner, and portended no good to the peace of Europe. It was, however, a pleasant dinner, in which Hayward and Solvyns had most of the talk to themselves, but made it good talk. Gavard was afterwards accused by the Republican party of having conspired against them, which for his friends seemed always to be a statement in the nature of a joke. I once asked Gambetta if he seriously believed that Gavard had conspired, at which Gambetta shook with laughter in his jovial way, but added that it was absolutely necessary to pretend he had, for other people had conspired in the Embassy, and the head man (in the absence of an Ambassador) must be held responsible in such a case.'
Another diplomatist whom Sir Charles met in the same month was the Comte de Montgélas, first secretary to the Austrian Embassy:
'… A man who played a great part at this time, belonging to a Bavarian family which had furnished a distinguished politician to the Congress of Vienna. He went everywhere, knew everyone, was clever, showy, talkative; but after being one of the leading exponents of the Beaconsfield policy, he was suddenly dismissed by his Government, … and when, many years afterwards, I again saw him, he had become a servant of the British North Borneo Company. I believe he was too friendly to Bismarck to please Beust (then Austrian Ambassador in London).'
He tells also the story of a 'King-maker':