In every detail of its organisation Mme. Adam took a deep interest. And she was delighted when Spuller satisfied her curiosity by describing how the office was worked: how Challemel arrived at five o’clock, looked through the dispatches and then summoned the various editors to discuss the day’s events; how barely had the conversation begun when Challemel saw, in a flash, what would be the subject of his own article; how Isambert, the leader-writer, invariably came late; how Paul Bert, who contributed articles on science, was punctuality itself.
La République Française, as may well be imagined, figured large in the conversation when in the spring of 1874 its three directors, Gambetta, Spuller and Challemel, visited Bruyères.
Gambetta stayed there a week, going over occasionally to visit his parents and sister, who were then living at Nice. Mme. Adam had made their acquaintance some time earlier. She found them excellent people of the shop-keeping class. Mme. Gambetta, a Frenchwoman of la bonne bourgeoisie, but with no dowry to speak of, had, as we have said, married a grocer of Genoese origin, who was then in business at Cahors. But when Mme. Adam first made the family’s acquaintance they were living at Nice. The household consisted of Gambetta’s father and mother, a widowed sister, Benedetta, her little boy Léon, and a servant, who, having entered the Gambettas’ service at thirteen, was regarded as one of the family. Gambetta’s aunt, the famous “Tata,” had followed her nephew to Paris. His mother, Mme. Adam could see at a glance, lived, moved and had her being in her celebrated son. She was proud to relate how before his birth she had consulted a soothsayer, a somnambulist, who had declared her about to be the mother of a man who would govern France. Gambetta’s relatives remained Mme. Adam’s life-long friends. They frequently visited Bruyères. She helped them in various ways, and at Gambetta’s request arranged a second marriage for his widowed sister, who became Mme. Léris; and when she is in the south of France Mme. Adam never fails to go and see her. Mme. Léris is now living at Cahors, in what was formerly a monastic dwelling. She is surrounded by relics of her famous brother, trophies presented to him on great public occasions, which contrast strangely with the ecclesiastical fitments of the house.
One day in 1915, when I arrived at Gif, I found Mme. Adam reading a letter she had just received from Gambetta’s sister. This curious, original and highly entertaining document I was permitted to read. It showed plainly that though all the family money had been spent on the son’s education, by no means all the gifts had been showered upon him, for a plentiful dower of wit, common sense and originality has evidently fallen to the lot of Mme. Benedetta.
But here we are anticipating. We must leave Mme. Léris and go back to the year 1874, when her illustrious brother was visiting Bruyères.
Mme. Adam found Gambetta as delightful a guest as George Sand. She, by the way, was one of his bitterest foes. She regarded him as nothing but a windbag, un simple utilisateur.[274]
Gambetta’s voracious appetite, challenging comparison with that of the hero of his favourite author, Rabelais, did full justice to the good cheer which Mme. Adam never fails to put before her guests. He ate well, he drank well, and he enjoyed, to the full, all the picnics and the excursions which were planned for his entertainment, even the sailings in the barque named after one of his arch-enemy’s masterpieces, La Petite Fadette, and which ought, if there had been any consistency in the cosmos, to have foundered and shipwrecked one, at any rate, of its passengers.
Gambetta’s week at Bruyères afforded opportunities for many serious discussions. And although the friends were on the whole in perfect accord, we may, in the accounts Mme. Adam gives of these conversations, discern a difference of opinion, slight apparently, yet in reality fundamental, which, though at first a mere rift, was to widen into a chasm and finally to separate them. Mme. Adam even then began to see that the Republic of Gambetta’s dreams was not so Athenian as she thought. Between her aristocratic ideas and his radicalism there was a pronounced difference. She wanted to see the masses led by the élite. For Gambetta there was to be no élite: the masses were to be educated to guide and govern themselves. “Then we shall sink to their level,” prophesied Juliette. “No, we shall merely stretch out our hands to them,” was Gambetta’s reply.[275]
That spring visit to Bruyères was repeated in the following winter (December, 1874) and many times afterwards. Gambetta would arrive tired, worn-out by his political battles and by his electoral campaigns. But he, like Challemel-Lacour and many other exhausted politicians, never failed to find Bruyères La Villa du Bon Repos. Perfect restfulness was the order of the day. Lunch was deferred until two, so that the tired guest might sleep till one. Even the house-dog, “Modeste,” was banished to the gardener’s cottage for fear his barkings might disturb the great man’s slumbers. Everything was devised to divert his mind from politics: plays, concerts and those charades in which his hostess excels even to-day in her eighty-first year. During excursions and picnics not a word so much as bearing on politics was permitted to be spoken. Against the crowds of supporters, admirers and curiosity-mongers who would have invaded his solitude his host and hostess protected him with une energie farouche.[276] But occasionally not even their devotion could prevent his being compelled to make a speech in the neighbourhood, or on one occasion from the balcony of Bruyères itself. Certain reactionary newspapers did not scruple to attribute a political significance to Gambetta’s visits to Bruyères. They hinted that Marshal MacMahon’s[277] government regarded with disapproval and had even made a raid on one of these conciliabules in order to detect and denounce a civil servant who was present.[278]
In the intervals of these visits, and while Mme. Adam was at Bruyères, Gambetta, despite his multifarious occupations and interests, found time to keep her au courant with affairs in Paris by long letters. “He made his Sévigné,” as his friend expressed it, in a delightful manner. At the length of his letters the Adams marvelled. In these lively pages he discussed in detail his own opinions and those of others of the political situation at home and abroad. No one who is interested in Gambetta should neglect to read this correspondence.