Indeed, all who have seen Mme. Adam entertaining her guests will agree that she possesses the true salon manner, and that she is mistress of that enviable art of talking so as to make others talk.
Had it not been for his admiration of Gambetta, Edmond Adam would have thrown in his lot entirely with that section of the republican party known as the left centre. “As it was,” writes his wife, “he was to serve as a hyphen (à trait d’union) between the left centre, the republican union and the extreme left. There were those who thought that Juliette was chiefly responsible for her husband’s sympathies with the extreme wing of the republican party. But this she will not admit,[262] though she does not deny that her special friends were radicals, while Adam’s were moderates. Thiers himself said to Adam one day, ”Quand votre femme rougit, bleuissez.“ And it is obvious that Juliette with her impulsive nature not infrequently lost patience with the grandes ombres élyséennes, as she dubbed Laurent Pichat, Victor Hugo, Louis Blanc, and those other vieilles barbes of 1848 who were the mainstay of the left centre. ”For them,“ she writes, ”République is a solemn and pompous word. The young, with Gambetta at their head, are more practical and utilitarian.“ They desired a government adapted to the phase of democracy to which France had then attained. Nevertheless, there was nothing commonplace or even opportunist in those bright visions of the future Republic which Gambetta painted in his speeches. ”Half smiling,“ writes Mme. Adam, ”he came straight to my Athenian Republic.[263]... He desired a France withdrawn into herself in order to heal her wounds. But when he spoke of her rôle after this enforced period of retirement, then he had a vision of her future prestige, when the army, chief symbol of the country’s revival, should be strengthened, glorified every day in order to raise la patrie from defeat. Then he saw numberless schools educating the people—the French schoolmaster playing as prominent a part as the German schoolmaster—secularism dissipating all the darkness of clericalism, liberating thought, correcting the errors of the past, until France, grown great by misfortune, astonished the whole world by her resurrection.“
Mme. Adam used to complain that in Paris during the first years of the Republic, while the National Assembly continued to sit at Versailles, anything like true sociability was impossible. And it was true that poor “capitulating Paris” was somewhat shorn of her brightest social glories. The whole of political society precipitated itself upon Versailles. On the days when some great oration was expected from Thiers, Dufaure, Batbie or Gambetta, the railway platform at the Gare St. Lazare was thronged, and the carriages in the Versailles train so crowded that it was almost impossible to find a place. Versailles itself was completely transformed. Never since its royal days had it seen such life. It is true that the dull stream of black coats flowing along its streets made one long for the gay, beplumed, bejewelled courtiers of le Roi Soleil. Nevertheless, the political whirl of the place was much greater than ever during l’ancien régime. Constituents waylaid deputies in the streets and poured into their impatient ears whole cahiers of grievances. At the luncheon and dinner-hour the Hôtel des Réservoirs was packed. It was necessary to reserve tables days in advance. And how delightful it was to sit and sip one’s coffee in the delicious freshness of the park after a hot summer afternoon passed in the close atmosphere of the parliament chamber. In that charming verandah, which many of us know so well, ministers and deputies met together, while the gay frocks and the still gayer laughter of their women friends enlivened the scene. Centuries seemed to have passed since the evil days of l’Année Terrible. Nowhere was the miraculous recuperative force of France more striking, never had political society more entrain than during those parliament years at Versailles.
Of that sparkling world Mme. Adam was one of the brightest adornments, one of the gayest flashers, as Fanny Burney would have said. Always perfectly gowned—elle portrait admirablement la toilette was the opinion of every one—she never missed an important séance. After having dined at the Hôtel des Réservoirs in the evening, she would be at the Gare St. Lazare at nine the next morning; and surrounded by a coterie of eminent politicians, who were all in love with her, would make the journey to Versailles and take her accustomed place in a box of the theatre of the Château, which now served as a meeting-place for the Assembly. It had been built by Gabriel as an opera-house for Louis XIV. While what had been the stage, now shut off from the main building, had been converted into a lobby, a mahogany rostrum, approached by a double staircase of six steps, communicated to the theatre of that most autocratic of monarchs something of the air of a modern parliament house, and the constant movement among the seven hundred and twenty-eight representatives of the Republic, the perpetual lifting of the heavy red velvet portières which led into the lobby, suggested a political instability quite out of harmony with the traditions of le Grand Monarque.
Among the most striking figures in the Assembly hall were some of Juliette’s greatest friends. One might easily recognise the Orleanist Marquis de Lasteyrie by his green eye-shade, M. Jules Simon by his student’s stoop, M. Dufaure by his brown frock-coat, M. Littré by his blue velvet skull-cap, M. Garnier-Pagès by his famous faux col, and close by him that “Bull of Bashan of politics,” M. Gambetta,[264] by his leonine head and the half-recumbent attitude in which he listened attentively to every word of the debate.
Gambetta’s first appearance at Versailles in July 1871 was a great political event. At a by-election he had been chosen by three departments, Bouches-du-Rhone, Var and Seine. “The day of his first speech,” writes Mme. Adam, “was a day of profound emotion for us, and of great curiosity for others, who flocked to see the fou furieux.” In those days Gambetta, though only three-and-thirty, was already threatened with that stoutness which, in a man of his stature, required all the dignity of his strong personality to carry off. He had not yet, moreover, been taken in hand by Adam’s tailor. His black frock-coat, white drill trousers and panama hat made him appear something of a Tartarin. The unsuitability of his attire would sometimes diminish the effect of his orations.
On the July day when this political Bohemian, emerging from his five months’ retirement, suddenly burst upon the cultivated audience at Versailles, his power of utterance, his energy of thought, and above all his unexpected moderation carried every one away.
“He roared” (il a rugi), said the wife of a conservative deputy who sat next to Mme. Adam. “Yes,” replied Juliette, “he is a lion.” The moment was one when the bishops of France, led by Monseigneur Dupanloup, were petitioning the French Chamber to restore the Pope’s temporal power. Gambetta, while unchaining all the fervour of his anti-clerical wrath, nevertheless supported the government in its motion that the question, instead of being discussed by the Assembly, should be referred to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. His support of Thiers, whom he and his friends were supposed to regard as nothing but un vieillard sinistre, took every one by surprise. Coming home in the train Adam, who was at once the friend of Thiers and of Gambetta, was bombarded with questions—
“Come, Adam, you must be in the know! Are they in agreement? If so, you must be acting as intermediary between them.”[265]