"Je sais, je mesure l'insuffisance amère de toute parole de consolation pour d'aussi grandes douleurs, d'aussi irréparables pertes. Car même l'impuissance de semblables remèdes qui m'ont empêché de vous écrire plutôt, m'ont arrêté dans le désir de venir près de vous à un moment aussi lugubre pour votre grand coeur. J'ai cru plus digne, plus respectueux de vos angoisses, d'attendre; et je m'en suis remis à votre pénétration naturelle pour comprendre et accepter mon silence.
"Aujourd'hui je viens vous dire que le plus haut prix que je puisse obtenir de notre commune affection serait de pouvoir penser que dans la fuite de la vie, je pourrais être assez heureux pour être de quelque utilité dans les actes de votre existence.
"Je viendrai vous voir demain mardi à 2 heures et vous répéter de vive-voix ce que je dis ici. Je suis tout entier à vous et de coeur,
"Votre ami,
"LÉON GAMBETTA."
From that day forward Sir Charles met him constantly.
'It would have been difficult to find a better companion at such a moment than one who was so full of interest in life, about things which were absolutely outside my own life, who was surrounded by people who could recall to me no circumstances of pain.'
After seeing Gambetta, Sir Charles roused himself to write a reply in the last days of October to Sir William Harcourt, whose sympathy had been expressed with a rare warmth of kindness, and who caused his son—then a boy of eleven, [Footnote: Afterwards the Right Hon. Lewis Harcourt, created Viscount at the end of 1916.]—'to write to me about Katie, who had been kind to him, which was a pretty thought, and proposed that I should go and live with him, which I ultimately did.'
'Some scraps of polities' were added to they letter, in the hope of reviving his interest in life; but Sir Charles at this moment was fully determined to resign his seat, feeling himself unable to face old associates and associations again. His brother Ashton, now busily and successfully at work in directing his newspaper, the Weekly Dispatch, begged him at least to consider his constituents. An election caused by the Radical member's retirement would certainly let in a second Tory. Also:
"For yourself, I really think, my dear boy, that work is the best remedy, and though you may not think it now, you could not give it up…. It seems selfish to speak of myself, but I should have to give up the Dispatch, as the thing is too serious for me to go into without your advice. Do think it over again, Charlie; there is no hurry. I will come next week. We must not make dear Dragon's [Footnote: Mrs. Chatfield, their grandmother.] last days unhappy by wandering over the world year after year. Remember your child, and that you must regard the living as well as the dead. I am sure she would never have let you sacrifice your career. Do think it over again."