On every one of these points, with the exception of the strengthening of the army, he found himself in disagreement with Mme. Adam. “If I did not regard the establishment of a Republic as an absolute guarantee of the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine,” she had said to Gambetta on the eve of the passing of the 1875 constitution, “then I would not support the Republic.”
“I thought you were a republican above all things.”
“No. I am first a Frenchwoman, then a passionate adorer of liberty, then a republican!”
“And you are always out of rank,” added her friend, not without impatience.[302]
It was during a picnic at Fontainebleau that Mme. Adam first heard Gambetta advocate the return of France to her old colonial traditions. It seemed to Juliette that by so doing he was postponing la Revanche.
“For love of France,” she entreated, “do not think of these diversions.”
Neither would she hear of an alliance with England. The Picard blood ran too strong in her veins.[303] Not until our entrance into this great war did she consistently display sympathy with great Britain.[304] Even during the Entente Cordiale she wondered whether England would not, after all, prove herself perfide Albion. Her grandmother had taught her to mistrust the English, hate the Prussians and love the Russians. As a young girl she detested the idea of fighting the Crimean War in alliance with England; and when peace came she rejoiced that now France could return to friendship with Russia and enmity with England.[305] So now, if France must seek for an ally, let her go to Russia, not to England. Bismarck was eager to avert any understanding between France and Russia. For that very reason, she said to Gambetta, we should seek it.[306]
As to Gambetta’s real opinion of a Franco-Russian alliance there is considerable uncertainty. André Tardieu in his book Nos Alliances[307] quotes Gambetta as having said to a French Ambassador, Chaudordy, about to set out for Petrograd: appuyés sur la Russie et sur l’Angleterre, nous serons inattaquables. Mme. Adam tells of a mysterious journey she and her husband took with Gambetta to Geneva, where Princess Lise Troubetzkoi had arranged for him an interview with Gortschakoff.[308] The interview did not take place, however. And it is perfectly clear from Gambetta’s correspondence with Mme. Adam that then, for the time being, at any rate, he thought France should hold herself free from any alliances.
“La France,” he wrote to Mme. Adam, “doit se tenir à l’écart, elle doit, tout en faisant des vœux pour la paix, ne rien faire, ne rien dire, qui puisse de près ou de loin l’engager même en parole avec personne.”
“Europe,” he continued, “had stood by while France was conquered. Let Europe now arrange her own affairs. It was the turn of France to stand aloof, to concern herself entirely with her own resurrection, to put her own house in order. When the day of her power and her strength returned, then would be the time for her to make her voice heard, and, as the price of her support to say, ‘What will you give me?’ On that day,” wrote Gambetta, “we may receive attractive proposals from a quarter whence we least expect them.”