These letters show how serviceable was Mme. Adam to her friend and to his party when conservative machinations were placing the Republic in great jeopardy. The year 1875 was a critical year for the Republic. That constitution, which was to set it on a permanent basis, was then being debated in the National Assembly. The President’s powers were being defined, also his relations to the legislative body, now consisting of a lower house, la chambre des députés, and an upper, the senate, of which Adam became a member. The lively discussion of all these matters, which took place in Mme. Adam’s salon, she reproduces in her Souvenirs. To the disappointment of republicans, it appeared throughout the three following years that this constitution had not placed the Republic out of danger. More than once the conservatives seemed on the point of substituting for it some kind of monarchical régime.
The Republic’s greatest danger was in the spring and summer of 1877, when MacMahon, by what is known as his coup d’état of le seize Mai, brought in a conservative ministry. At that time Mme. Adam was passing through the deep waters of personal bereavement. Edmond Adam died in May. But before his death he had been able to render valuable service to the republican cause by helping to unite the various sections of the republican party, les vieilles barbes of 1848, the moderates who supported Thiers and the extremists who were led by Gambetta. The Adams brought about a meeting between Gambetta and Thiers. Le fou furieux and le vieillard sinistre found themselves called upon by the gravity of the political situation to sink their differences, and to unite their forces in opposition to MacMahon’s reactionary Government. This reconciliation practically assured the triumph of the republican cause. Adam had also been able to sell very advantageously a newspaper which Gambetta had recently founded, La Petite République. And the proceeds of this sale, so Gambetta himself admitted, furnished him with the sinews of war for his political campaign.
On the evening of Adam’s funeral his friend the ex-President Thiers, who himself had but three months to live, dragged his fourscore years up Mme. Adam’s staircase. “It was his wish and it is mine,” she said to her visitor, “that I should continue his life in my own.”
“I will help you in every way I can,” said Thiers.[279] Then he went on to impress upon her the importance of uniting their forces to win victory for the cause to which Adam had devoted his life.
There lay upon the table, among the numerous letters of sympathy Mme. Adam had received, one from Émile de Girardin. In the days of Mme. d’Agoult’s salon they had been great friends; but they ceased to meet when Juliette married Adam. He, it will be remembered, could never forgive Girardin for having killed in a duel Armand Carrel, his friend and collaborator on the National. Now Girardin wrote: “Adam in his life would not permit me to love him, will you permit it now he is dead?” “What am I to do?” Mme. Adam asked Thiers. “Let him come,” was Thiers’ advice. “In your salon, Girardin will feel that he is absolved from the guilt of Carrel’s death.... Moreover, you owe it to Adam to fill that vacancy in our ranks which his loss has created.”
Mme. Adam acted on her friend’s advice: she received Girardin, who became henceforth a constant habitué of her salon, and one of the most valuable assets of that Republican party from which hitherto he had held aloof. “Girardin is detested and at times is detestable,” wrote Mme. Adam, “but his friendship is the most faithful and courageous I have ever known.”[280]
Many another recruit did Mme. Adam’s charming persuasiveness enlist on the side of the opposition. The republican leaders were constantly appealing to her to see what she could do with first one, then another. One evening Gambetta said to her: “You have brought us Girardin; you have removed Raoul Duval from hostile influences; you are preserving for us the loyalty of many wavering friends; you are enrolling so many recruits, that now I ask you to do a very difficult thing—to attract Gallifet to our group.”[281] Needless to say, Gallifet was won over.