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MADAME ADAM
[Illustration: Affectueusement juliette adam (1915)]
MADAME ADAM
(JULIETTE LAMBERT)
_LA GRANDE FRANÇAISE_
FROM LOUIS PHILIPPE UNTIL 1917
BY
WINIFRED STEPHENS
AUTHOR OF “FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION,”
“FRENCH NOVELISTS OF TO-DAY,” “MARGARET OF FRANCE,”
ETC., ETC.
_WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS_
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
PREFACE
LA GRANDE FRANÇAISE[1]
“Professor of Energy,” a term first applied to Napoléon I, is a title
which has been bestowed on more than one living Frenchman. None has
better claim to it than Mme. Adam, _La Grande Française_, as she has
been happily called, the story of whose life, which is now running
into its eighty-first year, is told in the following pages.
To write Mme. Adam’s biography is also to write one of the most
momentous chapters of French history. For this remarkable woman has
lived through the Revolution of 1848, the _coup d’état_ of 1851, the
agony of the siege of Paris, the civil war of the Commune, and two
invasions of her beloved _patrie_.
As the mistress of a leading political salon, as the founder and
editor for twenty years of an influential fortnightly magazine, _La
Nouvelle Revue_, as for many years the intimate friend of Gambetta, of
Thiers, of other French ministers, of the representatives of foreign
powers and of such eminent French writers as George Sand, Flaubert,
Victor Hugo, Alphonse Daudet, Pierre Loti, Paul Bourget and Maurice
Barrès, she has not only kept her finger on the pulse of her great
nation, but she has to some extent modulated its heart-beats.
The key to Mme. Adam’s temperament and to all the varied phases of
her career is her passionate belief in self-government, in that cause
of national independence for which the powers of L’Entente are now
engaging in this world-embracing conflict. We may call it a belief,
but originally in Mme. Adam’s case it was an instinct born in her and
inherited from her father, one of the most ardent of revolutionaries.
Mme. Adam is a _revoltée_ to the core. _Toujours hors des rangs_,
Gambetta said of her. In numerous incidents of her childhood
her rebelliousness revealed itself. The growth of her reasoning
powers, however, led her to submit to discipline, to embrace with
fervour—she can never do anything by halves—the republican creed, and
to become the irreconcilable adversary of the Second Empire. Then
the national defeat of 1871, acting upon what she has described as
her _combativité rentrée_ (her suppressed combativeness), turned her
passion for self-government into an ardent advocacy of the principle
of nationality, into a vehement protest against everything which could
in even the remotest manner be suspected of undermining that principle.
Consequently we shall find Mme. Adam loudly lifting up her voice,
vigorously wielding her pen most frequently against Prussian
aggressiveness, but also against imperialistic ideas, no matter in
what shape or form, no matter in what part of the world she can detect
them. We shall find her opposing alike the French tendency to colonial
expansion and the Austrian _Drang nach Osten_, Mr. Gladstone’s later
policy in Egypt and the Conservative coercion of Ireland, the Magyar
domination over the Slav peoples and our war with the Boer Republic in
South Africa. We shall find her also ever glorifying the army and navy
as the most effective guarantee of national independence.
Nationalism is Mme. Adam’s creed, patriotism her religion. French
Nationalists, like Léon Daudet, regard her as having been the strong
tower of the French idea (_la forteresse de l’idée française_)
throughout the forty-four years separating the war of 1914 from the
war of 1870. If in later years Mme. Adam has renounced her father’s
agnosticism and returned to the bosom of the Church, it is primarily
because she considers that only by submitting to the Roman obedience
can she best continue the traditions of her country.
I am very fortunate, for Mme. Adam has throughout taken a deep
interest in this biography. We have discussed it together at length.
Despite her multifarious war activities she has found time to write
me some forty letters in response to my questions. She has also
introduced me to her friend and collaborator in _La Nouvelle Revue_,
Mme. Jeanne Krompholtz, who has kindly furnished me with valuable
information.
For the greater part of Mme. Adam’s life, however, from her birth in
1836 down to 1880, my main authority has been her seven volumes of
_Souvenirs_. These living documents, written, many of them, under
the immediate impression of the events they record, I have carefully
compared with contemporary and more recent writings, indicated by
foot-notes throughout these pages. For the quarter of a century and
more which has elapsed since the close of Mme. Adam’s _Souvenirs_
I have consulted her numerous other autobiographical works, her
contributions to _La Nouvelle Revue_ and to other periodical
literature, and also the frequent references to her personally, and to
her books, which have appeared from time to time in the French press
and elsewhere.
I have to thank Sir Sidney Colvin, who frequently visited Mme. Adam at
her salon’s most brilliant moment, in the seventies, for generously
bringing forth from the rich treasure-house of his remembrance and for
permitting me to incorporate in this book valuable recollections which
enhance, confirm and complement impressions derived from other sources.
Had he lived to see this work completed I should have gladly taken
this opportunity to thank another of Mme. Adam’s acquaintances and
admirers, M. Elie Mercadier, Director in London of L’Agence Havas. For
to his lively talk about _La Grande Française_ and her circle I am
indebted for many a striking trait and useful suggestion.
WINIFRED STEPHENS.
_London, 1917._
FOOTNOTE:
[1] “_Celui qui l’a baptisée ‛la Grande Française’ a bien dit._”—Léon
Daudet, _L’Entre-Deux-Guerres_, 231 (1915).
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE v
I. BIRTH, PARENTAGE AND INFANCY. 1836-1839 1
II. CHILDHOOD. 1839-1848 10
III. HER FIRST REVOLUTION (FROM A SCHOOLGIRL’S POINT
OF VIEW). 1848 19
IV. FIRST MARRIAGE AND EARLY YEARS IN PARIS. 1849-1858 37
V. HER FIRST BOOK. 1858 51
VI. SALON LIFE DURING THE SECOND EMPIRE. 1858-1863 62
VII. AMONG THE UTOPIANS. 1858-1864 80
VIII. HER PRE-WAR SALON. 1864-1870 97
IX. HER FRIENDSHIP WITH GEORGE SAND. 1858-1870 120
X. THE WAR AND PREPARATIONS FOR THE SIEGE OF
PARIS. 1870 133
XI. THE SIEGE OF PARIS. 1870-1871 144
XII. THE COMMUNE. 1871 158
XIII. GAMBETTA’S EGERIA. 1871-1878 170
XIV. _LA REVANCHE._ 1870-1880 188
XV. DISILLUSIONMENT. 1878-1880 204
XVI. _LA NOUVELLE REVUE._ 1879-1899 212
XVII. VIEWS ON FOREIGN POLITICS 222
XVIII. THE ABBESS OF GIF. 1880-1917 236
INDEX 247
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_To face page_
PORTRAIT OF MADAME ADAM IN 1915 _Frontispiece_
JULIETTE LAMBERT. (_From a portrait by Léopold Flameng, 1860_) 71
THE VILLA BRUYÈRES, MADAME ADAM’S RIVIERA HOME 117
PORTRAIT OF MADAME ADAM IN 1879 185
THE DEVICE OF _LA CROISADE DES FEMMES FRANÇAISES_ 193
PORTRAIT OF MADAME ADAM IN 1885 209
RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF GIF IN THE PARK OF MADAME
ADAM’S PRESENT HOME 237
THE CASTLE OF VAVEY 245
ERRATA
Page 9, note ^1, for _Essay on the Spirit of Comedy_ read _Essay on
Comedy, and the uses of the Comic Spirit_.
Page 63, l. 25, for _Memoirs_ read _Mémoires_.
Page 99, l. 10, _for_ Fagwet _read_ Faguet.
Page 194, l. 24, _for_ parties _read_ parts.
Page 236, Chapter motto, for _heureux on_ read _heureux ou_.
Page 239, l. 8, for _goutte_ read _goûter_.
Page 240, l. 6 from bottom, _for_ Ricard _read_ Aicard.
MADAME ADAM
CHAPTER I
BIRTH, PARENTAGE AND INFANCY
1836-1839
“_L’émotion, l’ébullition sont en permanence dans nos
âmes._”—_Mme. Adam, Souvenirs._
In the opening pages of her _Recollections_ Mme. Adam has told,
with more vivid detail than is unhappily here possible, the story
of two generations of her ancestors. Her own career has not lacked
romance; but many of its most thrilling incidents pale beside the
experiences of her forbears. Tracing them back to the Napoleonic Wars,
she presents us with a lively picture of domestic history, which
is as far from being commonplace as it is possible to imagine. For
it embraces moving scenes of rapturous love affairs, extraordinary
marriages, a startling infidelity, quarrels about dowries, and the
story of a son who had a rare precocious experience. At the age of
nine, he found himself already disinherited and sent forth in the
world, cast upon the mercy of the family milkman, with whom he took
refuge. This juvenile outcast was Mme. Adam’s maternal grandfather,
of whom, under the name of Dr. Seron, we shall hear much more anon.
Only by unwavering persistence, and stern resolution did this unhappy
boy escape from his benefactor’s vocation. Tramping to Paris,
boots in hand, to save shoe-leather, he educated himself into the
medical profession and ultimately married Mme. Adam’s grandmother,
Pélagie Raincourt. Pélagie also was a highly romantic person, no
less remarkable than her husband. For on her wedding morning, as the
result of a family broil, by no means rare among Mme. Adam’s forbears,
she escaped in a pet from her mother’s house, and was found sitting
by the roadside, clad only in a nightcap and dressing-gown, by her
bridegroom, who had pursued her on horseback. Swinging her into the
saddle, in order to avoid further escapades, he carried her off to the
church and there married her out of hand. Her sole bridal adornment
was a white carnation, which a woman of the people pinned into her cap.
Juliette in later years was shown the cap and the carnation to
illustrate the story, which she heard from the runaway’s own lips.
Mme. Seron continued all her life addicted to romance. When it became
a question of marrying her daughter, Olympe, Mme. Adam’s mother, Mme.
Seron, a catholic, chose a son-in-law who was an agnostic, because she
was attracted by his appearance and his history. Jean Louis Lambert,
Mme. Adam’s father, had for the sake of his opinions sacrificed
brilliant ecclesiastical prospects, and from the prospective secretary
of the Archbishop of Beauvais had become an usher in the boys’
school opposite Mme. Seron’s house. This heroic youth was taken by
Mme. Adam’s grandmother, educated as a doctor, and married to the
reluctantly quiescent Olympe, who from that time forward adopted that
attitude of injured passivity which was expressed by her favourite
phrase “where you have tethered the goat there it will graze.”
All this happened in Picardy, a province where people lived well and
washed sparingly. The very name of Mme. Adam’s birthplace, Verberie,
with its suggestion of oyster patties and sauterne, made Robert Louis
Stevenson’s mouth water, as he paddled towards it in his canoe.
Juliette remembers how on Fridays at ten in the morning the oyster
cart from Boulogne would arrive, bringing twelve dozen oysters for
her family, how they would all sit round the table, the oyster barrel
in the centre, and how each with his or her knife would open his or
her oysters. Juliette’s grandfather and father would consume four
dozen each, her grandmother and mother two dozen each, while sometimes
there would be a friend who would abstract as many as possible from
his hosts’ respective shares. Wine flowed freely at these feasts. Dr.
Seron was a twelve-bottle man. But fortunately his beverage was only
light Macon; and this, happily for his patients, was not consumed
until he had performed his operations at the hospital. Operations!
One trembles at the very word when associated with Dr. Seron. For,
according to his granddaughter, that country surgeon was a most
diligent cultivator of microbes. Ablutions, as we have said, were rare
in Picard households. A bath was unheard of. Dr. Seron held that the
face should be washed as little as possible for fear of bringing out a
rash. Soap was only used on Sundays. The windows, of course, were kept
tightly shut. Physical exercise was carefully avoided. The women of
Mme. Adam’s family, like old-fashioned Frenchwomen down to the present
day, seldom went beyond their own house and garden, declining even the
attractions of the provincial theatre, for they agreed with Mme. de
Sévigné that _une grande dame ne doit pas remuer les os_ (a true lady
should not move about her bones).
Nevertheless, though their bodies were cribbed, cabined and confined,
these Frenchwomen’s minds moved in the great world of romance, their
fancies glowed with all the fervent imaginings of that effervescent
age. Mme. Adam’s grandmother lived, moved and had her being in the
“Human Comedy” of Balzac. Turning over the pages of his ninety-seven
novels, or sitting over her embroidery frame, she lived the lives of
his five thousand characters. Her unfortunate choice of a husband for
her granddaughter, Juliette, was largely dictated by the suitor’s
resemblance to one of her favourite novelist’s heroes.
* * * * *
Mme. Adam, as we have said, was born at the little Picard town
of Verberie, a famous place in mediæval times, the residence of
Frankish kings, whither in the ninth century had come Ethelbald,
King of Wessex, to wed his thirteen-year-old bride, Charles the
Bald’s daughter, Judith. Verberie in the last century was a favourite
place of call for tourists, who in pre-motor-car days used to drive
leisurely from Senlis to Compiègne. Our English poetess, Mary Robinson
(Mme. Duclaux)[2], tells how from the steep brow of a down, known as
“la Montagne de Verberie,” she saw through “the poplar screens of the
precipitous hill-side, a lovely blue expanse of country with the Oise
lying across it like a scimitar of silver”; how her carriage dashed
down the hill “and clattered along the sleepy, pebbly ... street, past
the inn, full of blouses and billiards.”
It was in that very inn, “Les Trois Monarques,” at Verberie that Mme.
Adam was born, at half-past five on the 4th of October, 1836.
Was it a glimpse into their daughter’s future that made her parents
name her “Juliette” after that most seductive of all the queens of
French salons, Mme. Récamier?
No gold or even silver spoon was in our Juliette’s mouth when she made
her first appearance on this world’s stage. At the time of her birth,
her parents’ fortunes had reached a low ebb. Dr. Lambert had been in
practice with his great-uncle in a village not far from Verberie,
and thither to his uncle’s house he had brought home his girl wife.
For the first years of their marriage everything had gone well with
the young couple. Then had come a deluge of misfortunes. Their first
baby, a boy, died in convulsions. Then the uncle died, and his estate
was divided among numerous legatees. Finally, a fire broke out which
nearly consumed the whole village, and, despite Mme. Lambert’s heroic
efforts, burned her husband’s house to the ground.
Thus were Juliette’s parents driven to seek harbourage in the inn at
Verberie, where Juliette was born.
Very shortly after this event, her father, one of the most unpractical
but at the same time most attractive of scientists, was fascinated by
the report of some marvellous scientific experiments, which were being
made in the neighbouring town of Compiègne, by a well-known chemist,
a Dr. Bernhardt. Leaving his wife and daughter to the tender mercies
of mine host of “The Three Monarchs,” Dr. Lambert went off to join
his _confrère_. This Dr. Bernhardt came to be regarded by Juliette’s
family as a veritable German Mephistopheles; for the only result of
his experiments was the consumption of Mme. Lambert’s dowry.
During her husband’s scientific adventures Mme. Lambert and her baby
girl in the Verberie inn were suffering serious privations. And they
might have come near starvation had it not been for the assistance
they received from Mme. Lambert’s parents. But this timely aid could
only be given surreptitiously; for Juliette had had the misfortune
to be born, not into poverty merely, but into one of the numerous
family feuds which were to chequer all her childhood. Between her
parents and her grandparents at the time of the first baby’s death
there had arisen a misunderstanding. For some time there had been
no communication between the Lamberts at Verberie and the Serons,
who lived not far away at Chauny, then a flourishing manufacturing
town, now converted by German vandalism into a heap of ruins. It was
only by the curtest of notes that Dr. Lambert had announced to Dr.
and Mme. Seron their granddaughter’s advent. Had it not been for the
report, brought by one of Dr. Seron’s patients, a friendly commercial
traveller, Juliette’s grandmother would never have known of the sorry
plight to which her son-in-law’s scientific vagaries had reduced his
wife and child.
On hearing the commercial traveller’s news, Mme. Seron, with
characteristic impetuousness, flew into a passion and declared that
she would set off at once for Verberie to rescue her granddaughter
from the parents who were obviously incapable of taking care of her.
Dr. Seron, however, succeeded in convincing his wife that a family
scene would be injurious for the infant, whom her mother was nursing.
He reminded Mme. Seron that the first Lambert baby had died in
convulsions; and finally he induced her to postpone her intervention
until the child was nine months old and might leave her mother without
danger.
Meanwhile the landlord of “The Three Monarchs” was secretly given to
understand that Mme. and Mlle. Lambert must be made comfortable, and
that Dr. Seron might be held responsible for the reckoning.
With great difficulty during those interminable nine months did the
ardent grandmother possess her soul in patience. She occupied the
time, however, in working out the details of the cleverly devised plot
by which she ultimately succeeded in carrying off her grandchild.
Juliette in after years used to delight to hear her grandmother
describe all the stages of that famous _coup_: how the landlord of
the inn was made privy to the plot; how there stood ready a coach,
nothing less than a _berline_, recalling another flight, more famous
but less successful; how in the coach had been placed a warm shawl and
a bottle of hot milk; how, while Mme. Lambert was haggling over the
bill with the landlord, Mme. Seron, bearing a certain precious bundle,
was stealthily stealing to the _berline_ and then speeding away with
baby Juliette to join the diligence outside the town; how ultimately
the stolen jewel was deposited safely at Chauny, whither not long
afterwards her mother followed her.
In vain did Dr. Lambert, penniless and disillusioned, plead for the
return of his wife and daughter. “Not until you have proved yourself
able to support them,” was Mme. Seron’s stern reply; and, she added
relentlessly, “I adopt the child whom you abandoned, whom you left a
prey to the direst poverty. She is mine, and shall be as long as I
live.”
Thus ended the first of those kidnappings which were to recur at
intervals through the first sixteen years of Juliette’s life, until
her first marriage. They arose not merely from the rival claims of
parents and grandparents to possess the child, but from the fact that
each of these four persons held pronounced and divergent opinions as
to the upbringing of their adored one. In the quarrels which ensued,
Mme. Seron and Dr. Lambert were the protagonists; Dr. Seron and Mme.
Lambert played the parts of supers, or supported one side or the other.
We are all, even the most obstinate and strong-minded, moulded, though
often unconsciously, by various intellectual influences. To this rule
Juliette, despite her indomitable will and personal idiosyncrasy,
was no exception. And a study of her mental development shows her
passing through three distinct phases: her childhood and youth, when
her grandmother’s or her father’s influence dominated alternately:
middle life, when broadly speaking she sympathised with her father’s
opinions: her later years, after the war of 1870, when more or less
she was returning to her grandmother’s point of view.
With these two formative forces, with these two remarkable persons,
Mme. Seron and her son-in-law, Dr. Lambert, we must become intimately
acquainted if we would understand Juliette’s character and career.
We must also remember that the time of Juliette’s upbringing was
the hey-day of the romantic period, a time when individualism ran
rampant, when the most Utopian of dreamers believed they were about
to realise their wildest hopes. It was true that after half a century
of experiments in government France had practically settled down for
a while into the jog-trot of Louis Philippe’s reign. But beneath the
veil of the moderate and the commonplace which this compromise of
constitutional monarchy had cast over the country, there bubbled and
boiled a welter of effervescence which twelve years after Juliette’s
birth exploded in the Revolution of 1848.
The national temperament of France during the first half of the last
century partly accounts for the temperament of Juliette’s family,
and for the atmosphere of intellectual and emotional feverishness in
which she was brought up. Looking back from the vantage point of old
age on the stormy scenes of her childhood, she asked: “Were we more
sensitive then, more susceptible, more dramatic than to-day? I believe
we were.”[3] It is not improbable also that Mme. Adam, regarding her
childhood through the long vista of years, may have unconsciously
exaggerated the violence of her sentiments and experiences. One of
her charms is that feeling for the dramatic, with which Gambetta once
reproached her, saying, “_Vous dramatisez trop, madame!_”
“My love for my grandmother and for my daughter,” said Mme. Adam to
me shortly before her eightieth birthday, “have been the two great
passions of my life.”
Of her grandmother, she announces in the beginning of her _Souvenirs_:
“I shall write of her often, but shall I ever ... be able to make her
live with that originality, that passion for the romantic which she
infused into us all, lifting on to the plane of high romance the whole
of our family life and each one of our daily actions?”
Though Mme. Seron hardly ever went outside her own domestic domain
except to attend mass on Sunday, her granddaughter could say that
never had she met a mind “more avid of adventure, more scornful of the
every-day and the commonplace, more eager for the romantic in life and
in literature.”
In no point, save in their passionate adoration of Juliette, did
Mme. Seron and her son-in-law agree. Yet in temperament they were
not altogether unlike; for they were both dreamers. But Juliette’s
grandmother, if she did not possess it, at least respected that
worldly wisdom which Dr. Lambert regarded with the utmost contempt.
He was an idealist pure and simple. We have seen him sacrificing a
brilliant ecclesiastical career to conscientious scruples. We have
seen him risking the happiness of his wife and child in his pursuit of
science. We shall see him again, more than once risking not only his
family’s happiness but his own life in the cause of political reform.
“I am the daughter,” writes Mme. Adam, “of a sincere sectary ... of
one who dreamed of absolute liberty, absolute equality.... Only for a
moment, during the Commune, did he believe his dream realised.”
Jean Louis Lambert was one of those rare persons with tastes both
scientific and literary. But it was only classical literature that
appealed to him. He was a passionate Grecian and an ardent admirer
of the French masterpieces of _le grand siècle_. In the remarkable
literary works which his own day was producing, in the novels of
Balzac and George Sand, which were his mother-in-law’s meat and drink,
he took not the slightest interest. His Homer, on the other hand, he
almost knew by heart; and he made his little daughter as familiar with
tales from the _Iliad_ as are most children with “Red Riding Hood” or
“Cinderella.” Dr. Lambert himself wrote verses in the classic style,
which he would recite to his mother-in-law; but there were others
which were red republican, and which he would have kept from her
hearing had not that _enfant terrible_ of a Juliette caught them up
and repeated them parrot-like to her grandparents. Dr. Seron, an old
soldier of _la grande armée_, was infuriated by poems in which his
son-in-law dared to attack his idol, the Emperor.
Indeed, the family tendency to wrangle was considerably accentuated by
the fact that three of its members (Juliette’s mother took no interest
in public affairs) held directly divergent political opinions. Mme.
Seron was a liberal monarchist, Dr. Seron a Buonapartist, and Dr.
Lambert a social democrat. None of these fervent partisans had the
remotest idea of keeping their opinions to themselves. Consequently,
whenever Dr. Lambert and his wife drove over from Blérancourt, a
village nine miles from Chauny, where Juliette’s father had set up in
practice, the voice of controversy rose high. These debates generally
occurred at meal time. And baby Juliette, accustomed to have the
attention of her doting elders fixed upon herself, strongly objected
to these diversions. She tells how to restore herself to the limelight
she would clamber into the middle of the table and begin to upset the
plates and glasses. The device never failed. Discussion ceased; the
three controversialists would be overcome with laughter, while the
silent member of the group, Juliette’s mother, would suddenly become
active. Snatching her daughter from the wreck on the table, she would
be administering a sound smacking when three pairs of hands would be
eagerly outstretched to rescue the culprit. Thus Juliette learnt
two lessons: first, not to fear her mother’s severity, from which
she might always count upon the indulgence of her other relatives
to deliver her; second, to appreciate “that first born of common
sense,” the comic spirit. In her earliest years it was her inestimable
privilege to have “laughter for nurse, pure fun for friend.”
George Meredith, it will be remembered, divides humanity[4] into three
classes: the non-laughers, the excessive laughers and those who stand
where the comic spirit places them, “at middle distance between the
inveterate opponents and the drum and fife supporters of comedy.”
In the table scene just described, each of these three classes is
represented. Juliette’s mother was a non-laugher, a morbid person
whose lack of fun, as is inevitable with women, degraded her to
be a mere household drudge. Juliette’s grandfather, the jovial
doctor, whose funny stories, nicknamed _Seronnades_, enlivened the
countryside, was of the drum and fife order, an apostle of _le gros
rire_. Juliette’s grandmother and father, though differing in so many
respects, were alike endowed with the true comic spirit. Long years
later, looking back on her turbulent childhood, Mme. Adam wrote: “I
should probably have been intolerable, had not the gay and merry
temperaments of my grandparents ... introduced into our relationship
a jocular spirit which did not admit of solemnity, even in our
grievances. Whenever I succeeded in reconciling them after one of
their disputes, it was because I had made them laugh.”[5] “Certainly,”
exclaimed a character in one of Pierre Mille’s stories, “he was no
Latin, for he took everything seriously.”[6] Juliette Adam, Gallic by
birth, Græco-Latin by education, as she likes to describe herself,
has always been ready to see a joke, even when it was at her own
expense. Thus she is proud to relate, how when at one of George Sand’s
dinner-parties, Flaubert, in Dumas’ presence, pointed out that in one
of her books she had made a man who had lost an arm take a box in both
hands, she joined in the laugh, saying gaily, “_Merci, Maître_.”[7]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] _Fields of France_, 163.
[3] _Souvenirs_, I. 350.
[4] _An Essay on Comedy, and the uses of the Comedy Spirit._ 62, 1903.
[5] _Souvenirs_, I. 127.
[6] _Le Monarque_, 169.
[7] _Souvenirs_, III. 163.