In five minutes the two men must have been in touch. Those who knew Sir Charles knew how his intense geniality of nature, masked sometimes for outsiders by a slight austerity, his air boutonné—as it was described by those who did not pass the barrier—showed immediately with those to whom he was drawn. That rire enfantin, described by Challemel-Lacour, would burst out at the first quick turn of talk, and he would give his whole self, with an almost boyish delight, to the encounter with a nature whose superabundant vitality and delight in life, as in Gambetta's case, equalled his own.
For these two the common points of interest were strongly marked. Not only was there the kindred geniality of disposition, and the kindred interest in the history and fortune of France: there was in each an overwhelming love of country; strong, indeed, in Gambetta, and in Dilke so strong that it can best be described in the words of a French friend who, watching him, said to Sir Charles's second wife: "That man is a great patriot, for with his whole self he serves his country, never staying to consider how she has served him."
In the spring of 1872 both men were young: Dilke not yet twenty-nine, Gambetta just thirty-four. But the past of one was crowded with experience, and the other had already made history.
Sir Charles here inserts—
'a word of the personality of Gambetta, who for a long time was my most intimate friend, and for whose memory I have still the deepest regard.
'It was on All Saints' Day of 1868 that a few republicans had paid a fête-of-the-dead visit to the tomb of a Deputy killed on the side of the Constitution at the time of the coup d'état, and had found it in a miserable state. Delescluze (who was two and a half years later to meet Baudin's fate, being killed, like him, in a black coat, unarmed, on a Paris barricade) communicated with Challemel-Lacour, and a subscription for a fitting tomb was started, which soon became an imposing manifestation of anti-Bonapartist opinion. [Footnote: The need for a fitting tomb is shown by the circumstance of Baudin's death and burial. He had gone early in the morning of December 3rd, 1851, to help in the construction of a barricade at the point where the Rue Ste. Marguerite and the Rue de Cotte meet. Two companies of the line arrived from the Bastille and formed an attacking party, and were joined by some men in blouses, who cried, on seeing the deputies: "À bas les vingt-cinq francs!" Baudin, unarmed, standing on the top of the barricade, replied: "Vous allez voir comment on meurt pour vingt- cinq francs." An attempt to address the soldiers by the Constitutionalists failed, and a shot from the barricade was replied to by a general volley, and Baudin fell, pierced by three shots. His body was taken to the Hôpital Ste. Marguerite, and when claimed by his brothers was given up only on condition that it should not be shown to the people, but immediately and quietly buried. He was buried on December 5th secretly in the cemetery of Montmartre (See Dictionnaire des Parlementaires, by Robert and Cougny).]
'The Government having prosecuted the papers which published the subscription lists, Challemel-Lacour caused the selection of Gambetta as counsel. He was a young barrister speaking with a strong Southern accent, which, however, disappeared when he spoke in public, vulgar in language and appearance, one-eyed, of Genoese (possibly Jewish) race, full of power. Gambetta made a magnificent speech, which brought him at one bound into the front rank among the republican leaders. His description of December 2nd was such as had never been excelled even by Cicero or by Berryer: "At that time there grouped themselves around a pretender a number of men without talent, without honour, sunk in debt and in crime, such as in all ages have been the accomplices of arbitrary violence, men of whom one could repeat what Sallust had said of the foul mob that surrounded Catiline, what Caesar said himself of those who conspired along with him: 'Inevitable dregs of organized society.'" The word Pretender, without adjectives, may seem somewhat weak as applied to the Prince President, the head of the band, but those who have heard Gambetta alone know the contempt which he could throw into his voice in the pronunciation of such a word. Finest of all the passages that remain to us of Gambetta's eloquence was one near the close of this memorable speech, which began: "During seventeen years you who are the masters of France have never dared to keep December 2nd as the national anniversary. That anniversary we take as that on which to commemorate the virtues of our dead who died that day—" Here the Advocate Imperial tried to interrupt him so as to spoil his peroration, and the written version now printed in his speeches differs altogether in language from that which was taken down by the shorthand writers at the time, although the idea is exactly the same. The two counsel spoke together for some minutes, each trying to shout down the other, until Gambetta's tremendous roar had crushed his adversary, whereupon, in the middle of his peroration, with a really Provençal forgetfulness of his art and subject, Gambetta interposed— "He tried to close my mouth, but I have drowned him"—and then went on.'
This picture is made more vivid by the pencillings on Sir Charles's copy of Daudet's Numa Roumestan, where the word "Gambetta" is scribbled again and again opposite passages which describe Numa's wonderful ringing voice, his quick supple nature, all things to all men, catching as if by magic the very tone and gestures of those with whom he spoke, prodigal as the sun in greetings and in promises, poured out in a torrent of words, which seemed "not to proceed from ideas, but to waken them in his mind by the mechanical stimulus of their sound, and by certain intonations even brought tears into his eyes."
'My friendship with Gambetta perhaps meant to me something more than the friendship of the man. Round him gathered all that was best and most hopeful in the state of the young republic. He, more than any other individual, had both destroyed the Empire and made new France, and to some extent the measure of my liking for the man was my hatred of those that he had replaced. Louis Napoleon … had dynastic ends in view…. The Napoleonic legend did not survive Sedan, and that it was unable to be revived in the distress which followed the Commune was largely owing to the policy and courage of Gambetta.
'There is some permanent importance in the discussions as to the origin of the war of 1870 which I had with Gambetta at this time; for it so happens that I have been able at various periods to discuss with the most absolute freedom the history of this period with the five men who knew most of it—Bismarck, Émile Ollivier, Gambetta, Nigra, and Casa Laigleisia (at that time Rancez), the Spanish diplomatist, afterwards three times Spanish Minister in London.