“LA REVANCHE”
1870-1914
“The passion of revenge is habitually over-estimated as a motive,
possibly through the influence of the novelists and playwrights to
whom it is so useful. When we examine man’s behaviour objectively
we find that revenge, however deathless a passion it is vowed
to be at emotional moments, is in actual life constantly having
to give way to more urgent and more recent needs and feelings.
Between nations there is no reason to suppose that it has any more
reality as a motive of policy, though it perhaps has slightly more
value as a consolatory pose.... In 1870 the former (France) was
humiliated with brutal completeness and every element of insult.
She talked of revenge, as she could scarcely fail to do, but she
soon showed that her grasp on reality was too firm to allow her
policy to be moved by that childish passion. Characteristically,
it was the victorious aggressor who believed in her longing for
revenge, and who at length attacked her again.”—Wilfred Trotter,
_Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_, 199 (1916).
Mme. Adam’s attitude towards that policy known in France as _la
Revanche_ offers an emphatic denial to one of Germany’s numerous
misrepresentations as to the origin of the Great War. In their peace
conversations with America, as on many other occasions, the Germans
have declared that one of the chief causes of the present struggle was
the _Revancharde_ Policy of France. Nevertheless, for at least twenty
years before the war that policy, which had never been adopted by the
French Government, had ceased to be advocated by the majority of the
French nation. One of the countless proofs of this may be found in
the title Mme. Adam gives to the last volume of her Reminiscences,
_Après l’Abandon de la Revanche_. About the year 1880 she began
to find that those who advocated _la Revanche_ were a constantly
dwindling minority. This minority continued to diminish until, in
the years immediately preceding the Great War, those whose national
hopes were focussed on the reconquest of the lost provinces (for the
word _revanche_ means not so much “revenge” in our sense of the word
as a winning back of one’s own) came to number not more than one
per cent. of the whole population. This was that infinitesimal group
in whose Chauvinist activities and aspirations the German Empire
professed to see a menace to the peace of Europe. And even among
those Chauvinist nationalists, of whom Mme. Adam was one of the most
fervent, there was hardly one, certainly not Mme. Adam herself, who
would have ventured to advocate an immediate aggressive war for the
purpose of reconquering Alsace-Lorraine. Not even the leader of French
militarists, Boulanger, desired it. Nevertheless, it was true that
Mme. Adam and a few fellow idealists desired to see _la Revanche_
becoming once more what it had been during the first decade after
1870, _l’idée reine_, the governing idea of France.
_La Revanche_ in this academic sense was the banner of the _Ligue
des Patriotes_, presided over by Paul Déroulède, of the _Action
Française_, a Royalist society founded by Alphonse Daudet’s son Léon,
in collaboration with that gifted writer Charles Maurras.
But none of these people were practical politicians; and none of them,
as we cannot repeat too often, advocated an immediate aggressive
war for the reconquest of the lost provinces. They desired above
all things that the brethren from whom they had been parted under
such heartrending conditions should not feel themselves forgotten.
And it was for the sake of these exiles that the _revanchards_
protested against Gambetta’s counsel, _pensons y toujours n’en parlons
jamais_. They spoke of them constantly, they spoke of them loudly—too
constantly, and too loudly, perhaps; for they certainly failed to
inspire the majority of their compatriots with that consuming desire
for reunion which burnt in their own hearts.
To keep this idea alive, Mme. Adam has written and laboured for
forty-five years. With this object, as we shall see, she founded a
fortnightly magazine, _La Nouvelle Revue_. In an article in this
review, dated September 1881, replying to an accusation made by
the German Press that France was likely to appeal to force, Mme.
Adam writes: “We have never ceased to ask M. Gambetta to remind our
brethren separated from us that we have never renounced the hope of
reunion with them.” Then she adds diplomatically: “Nothing in this
affirmation need alarm Germany’s military hegemony. Nevertheless, it
is well for her to know that, though far from dreaming of a rash war,
we shall never be guilty of the crime of forgetting.”
The wave of patriotic and nationalist fervour, which, as the result
of the Tangier (1905) and Agadir (1911) incidents, swept over France
during the ten years which preceded this war, indicated no desire for
aggression even on the part of the most rabid _revanchard_. It was
purely for a defensive war that France was preparing when in 1913,
in reply to Germany’s threatening military measures, she increased
to three years the term of military service, which in 1905 had been
reduced to two. By that time any idea of _la Revanche_ as a practical
measure had vanished from the majority of French minds.[288] It was
not on her eastern frontier so much as in her vast colonial empire
that France now saw herself threatened by Germany.
Mme. Adam, still passionately clinging to the forlorn hope of _la
Revanche_, had in her old age come to find herself practically alone
except for a little group of literary idealists. Her adherence to this
idea, which had been renounced by the majority of her nation, explains
her political and religious evolution during the last thirty years.
Previous chapters of this book will have shown how completely
in accord with Mme. Adam’s passionate, patriotic and energetic
disposition was this persistent advocacy of _la Revanche_. Retaliation
was in her blood. Even as a child, whenever she or any one else
received an injury or suffered an injustice her first thought had been
that some one must be made to pay for it. She had never been able to
take any wrong lying down. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, was
her motto; and nothing appeared to her so humiliating as the Christian
doctrine of resignation.
After the war her desire for retaliation grew into a consuming
passion. “I suffer acutely,”[289] she writes, “from that malady of
defeat, that perpetual pain which maddens a Frenchwoman who has been
conquered at every turning of the roads of Alsace, of Lorraine, who
has been crushed at Sedan, deceived and surrendered at Paris.” That
suppressed combativity (_combativité rentrée_),[290] which on the
capitulation of Paris she felt well-nigh bursting her head and her
heart, pursued her from February 1871 until August 1914.
Mme. Adam argued like Mr. Wells’ Letty when she believed her husband,
Teddy, to be dead.[291] “You see, if he is dead, then Cruelty is the
Law, and some one must pay me for his death. Some one must pay me....
I shall wait for six months after the war, dear, and then I shall go
off to Germany.... And I will murder some German. Not just a common
German, but a German who belongs to the guilty kind....”
On much the same lines did Mme. Adam reason when the iron of defeat
entered into her soul—she, too, would exact payment, not for any
personal wrong, but for a national injury; she would murder some
German, not only of the guilty but of the guiltiest kind, the
arch-criminal himself—none other than Bismarck. Only she would murder
him not with the sword, but with a weapon in the handling of which she
was more expert—with her pen. With this object, as we have said, she
founded, with the fortune her husband left her, _La Nouvelle Revue_.
In the pages of this magazine, in a series of powerful articles
entitled, “Letters on Foreign Politics,” she pursued unceasingly the
Man of Iron, revealing his hidden designs, disclosing his plots, and
warning France against the snares he was perpetually laying for her.
It was impossible that so terrific a disaster as _l’Année Terrible_
should leave any serious-minded French person the same as before the
war. But it had not the same effect upon every one. While most of Mme.
Adam’s circle embraced the policy of _la Revanche_, there were some
who, like George Sand and Arlès Dufour, turned their hatred not so
much against Germany as against war as a whole, and who found their
internationalist principles strengthened by defeat. With such ideas
Mme. Adam had not a particle of sympathy. They sundered her from
many of her friends. They caused her to turn with more enthusiasm
than ever to the one man who seemed capable of realising her hopes,
to Gambetta, _l’Homme de la Revanche_. Indeed, Gambetta’s immense
energy, his marvellous organising power, marked him as the one man in
Europe capable of confronting and checkmating that _sauvage de génie_,
Bismarck.
But, as we have said, Mme. Adam’s hope in Gambetta as _l’Homme de la
Revanche_ was doomed to disappointment. In order to see how her idol
came to be dethroned from his pedestal, we must retrace our steps,
returning to that critical year for the Republic, 1875.
During the general election for the new Chamber, which took place
after the Republic had been definitely established by the constitution
of 1875, Gambetta resumed his provincial tours. The political bagman
addressed immense audiences at Aix, at Arles, at Lyons. “I am rapidly
spending the reserves of rest which I laid in at Bruyères,” he writes
to Mme. Adam on the 17th of January. A few days later he is in Paris,
then down in the south again at Marseilles, then up in the north
at Lille, where he addresses four thousand persons. “_Enthousiasme
indescriptible_,” he writes. “I made a speech with which I am much
better contented than with my address at Aix. I explained to them what
our next majority must be: republican, democratic, liberal, pacific.
Those were the four heads of my sermon. I think I touched their hearts
and converted many unbelievers, and some who were indifferent. The
town is decorated with flags. The streets are crowded, despite the
severe cold. I am delighted. I have ranged their ranks in something
like order. All our friends are reconciled; and I count on having
fourteen deputies out of the eighteen.”[292] The republican majority
of the new chamber was largely owing to Gambetta’s colossal efforts.
Throughout the election the Adams had rendered their illustrious
friend invaluable service. Juliette, while she was at Bruyères, in
letters which Gambetta described as _un vrai rapport de ministre
plénipotentiaire_,[293] had kept him well informed of the state of
parties in the south. Adam, a well-seasoned politician, had placed at
his disposal all the wealth of his varied political experience. He had
accompanied him on his electoral tours, and once, on the occasion of
a great meeting at Auxerre, Juliette had joined the party. Whenever
she was at Paris, Gambetta could always count on meeting in her salon
people who would be useful to him.
Every one of the triumphs of _ce grand entraineur des masses_ Juliette
persuaded herself brought nearer the longed-for day when her brethren
would be released from their chains and reunited to the motherland.
[Illustration: THE DEVICE OF THE CRUSADERS WHO ARE LED BY MADAME ADAM
AND OTHER EMINENT FRENCHWOMEN]
Gambetta’s letters to Mme. Adam at this time show that he was firmly
convinced of Bismarck’s intention to renew war. Party strife in France
he believed was encouraging the Chancellor to become more and more
insolent. “_Le désarroi de la lutte anarchique de tous les partis
en France_,” he writes,[294] “_permet au plus terrible adversaire
de Berlin de nous presser de plus près en attendant qu’il fasse un
suprême effort pour arracher encore un lambeau de la patrie_.”
Gambetta was filled with despair to think that under such desperate
circumstances the French should have placed at their head _le plus
imbécile des Français_. That at a moment when they needed a Richelieu,
a Villars, a Mazarin, a Danton, or at least a Talleyrand, they
should have unearthed the most insignificant of the Empire’s knights
(_reîtres de l’empire_) and have confided to him the destinies of the
nation. For Marshal MacMahon and his Government Gambetta has not a
good word to say. And that, but for the intervention of Russia and
England, France in 1875 would have again been at war with Germany,
there now seems little doubt.
In a remarkable letter to Mme. Adam, written on the 24th of October,
1874,[295] Gambetta, with a true statesman’s insight, puts his finger
on the danger spot of Europe, wherein forty years ago lay the embryo
of this present conflict. “The powerful German Empire,” he writes,
“is suffocating in Central Europe. With all its nervous energy it
is striving to break through to the North Sea. It must have shores,
canals, straits, fleets, and a sea-going population. Its Baltic ports
are too remote from the high seas. They are in constant danger of
being choked up. The straits leading to them are narrow and dangerous.
To create a great fleet on those desolate and sandy shores is out of
the question. Bismarck realises that he cannot raise Germany to the
rank of a first-rate Power without giving her a fleet as formidable as
her army. This design is Holland’s death-sentence.”
And Gambetta goes on to express his profound admiration of Holland,
which he has just visited, and of the marvellous energy of the Dutch.
When the crisis of 1875 was past, when the elections of 1876 had
resulted in a Republican majority in the Chamber, although MacMahon
still remained President, Gambetta became more hopeful. At length
the Republic had been placed upon a definite footing. The four
years’ provisional government was now over. The constitution had
been established. On the eve of the election, towards the end of the
debates on the constitution, Gambetta had written to Mme. Adam:[296]
“At last we are nearing the end of our difficulties. And despite the
malcontents and the mere office-seekers, we (_i.e._ the republican
party) shall appear before the country in great force, offering it the
two things we had promised—the dissolution of the Assembly[297] and
the Republic. Thus we shall place the country in a position to send us
a new political generation worthy to complete the work and capable of
successfully accomplishing the regeneration of _la patrie_.”
Throughout the debates on the constitution, as we have seen, Mme.
Adam’s salon continued to serve as a lobby to the chamber. Every new
stage in the progress of that republican constitution she had so long
desired, filled her with rejoicing. “On the 24th of February,” she
writes,[298] “was passed the law establishing the Senate. Imagine
our joy. Imagine the meetings in our salon.... Of course, as yet our
Republic is but in its infancy; but it will grow. And we are certain
that in a few days’ time the law defining the various parts of the
constitution will be passed. All our gratitude as old republicans is
due to Gambetta, who has conducted the negotiations with marvellous
tact and diplomacy.”
Encouraged by the success of his labours, Gambetta began to take a
more hopeful view of the European situation. The crisis of 1875 having
been tided over, the French army having attained to a high degree of
excellent organisation, something approaching universal service for
five years having been instituted, he began to see his country in a
position to hold her own against Germany. Alas! how very far this
was from being the case was born in upon Gambetta when, in 1877,
he visited that country. On his return Gambetta sent Mme. Adam an
account of his journey. “This idea (the idea of the German visit),
_chère amie_,” he wrote,[299] “originated with you in a friendly
conversation.... We said to one another: ‛How useful it would be
... to go to Germany, and to take the opportunity afforded by the
manœuvres of studying on the spot, and with one’s own eyes, the
results of that vast military organisation of which we have been the
victims, and of which we remain the objective.’
“My only difficulty was how to carry out such an idea, how to observe
closely, how to penetrate everywhere without exciting attention and
suspicion, without being recognised.”
The simplest plan Gambetta found was to shave off his beard,
thus rendering himself—as he puts it—uglier than ever, and quite
unrecognisable even by his most intimate friends.
The result of that tour was to fill Gambetta with admiration of the
work accomplished by M. de Bismarck. But he was quick to see also that
Germany’s prosperity depended on the Prussian sword. Once that was
allowed to rust, then the whole mechanism of the German State would
fall out of gear. “The men of this nation,” he writes, “were well
advised to concentrate their attention on the army. Their efforts have
met with the most complete success. Unhappily,” he continues, “we
possess no force which is worthy to be compared with the troops I have
just seen.”
There is little doubt of the profound effect produced upon Gambetta
by this and other visits to Germany. They convinced him that France
was far from ready for _la Revanche_, at any rate for a _revanche_
by force of arms. He did not, however, abandon altogether the hope
of regaining the lost provinces by some diplomatic arrangement with
Bismarck. He could not believe that Germany would long be able to
endure the enormous burden of such vast military expenditure. To
a deputation of Alsatians who visited him he held out this hope,
adding,[300] “that the time would come when Germany would be willing
to enter into some friendly agreement with France, and that for such
an agreement there could only be one basis.”
Meanwhile, until that happy day should dawn, Gambetta advocated the
strengthening of the French army. And henceforth, with renewed vigour,
he never ceased to urge on the Government the necessity of perfecting
every means of defence. No doubt it was partly due to this impulsion
given by Gambetta that seven years after his death the German military
attaché in Paris was compelled to admit to Prince von Hohenlohe that
the French army was superior to the German.[301]
But while France was improving and strengthening her defences,
Gambetta was inclined to seek elsewhere compensation for the lost
provinces. He advocated colonial expansion. He also advocated powerful
alliances, notably with England; and with this object he more than
once met the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII) in Paris.
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.”
What that quarter was Mme. Adam knew perfectly. Gambetta, it seemed
to her, over-rated Bismarck’s power and influence. Her friend,
she thought, was inclined to reduce the whole of French policy to
the mere expectation of a day when from the Omnipotent, from the
quarter “whence they were least expected,” France might receive
propositions.[309]
Mme. Adam suspected Gambetta of being influenced in this direction
by a certain salon which he had begun to frequent. With a few
exceptions, those of Duclerc, de Reims and Gambetta, there were
no people who, after Bismarck, were more bitterly hated in Mme.
Adam’s circle than Count Henckel de Donnersmarck and his wife, the
widow of the Vicomte de Païva. Mme. Adam believed that la Païva, as
she called her, had been Bismarck’s spy before the war; and it was
rumoured that her husband, the Vicomte, on discovering it, had hanged
himself. Count Donnersmarck was certainly on the best of terms with
the German Chancellor, who after the surrender of Metz had made him
its Prefect. The holding of such an office was in itself enough to
make the Count detested in Paris. Nevertheless, finding Metz too hot
for him, with brazen effrontery he returned to the French capital and
to the mansion in the Champs Elysées, which before the war he had
built on the site of the Jardin des Fleurs, and which has now been
converted into the Travellers’ Club. The rumour that he had advised
Bismarck to demand five milliards war indemnity instead of three did
not increase the cordiality of his reception. And one of Mme. Adam’s
friends, Xavier de Feuillant, so she tells us, horsewhipped him up the
Champs Elysées.[310] Other Frenchmen, however, deemed it politic to
cultivate the acquaintance of one who was in Bismarck’s confidence.
And it was apparently in order to ascertain Germany’s real attitude
towards France that politicians like Thiers and journalists like Émile
de Girardin accepted invitations to the magnificent dinner-parties at
Païva House.
To Mme. Adam such breaking of bread at an arch-enemy’s board was
nothing short of the basest treachery. She wrote to her friend de
Reims, who had visited the Donnersmarcks,[311] that if he continued
to frequent Bismarck’s agent she would break with him for ever and
deliver him up to Xavier Feuillant, who would treat him as he had done
Henckel.
Imagine her horror, therefore, when Spuller told her that Gambetta,
above all people, had actually dined at la Païva’s table. Spuller
swore her to secrecy. She could not, therefore, unburden her mind
in those torrential reproaches to which she was now in the habit of
treating her former hero. But after Spuller had left her she gave way
to despair. “I felt something die within me,” she writes.[312]
Yet another blow was in store for her; and again it was Spuller’s
hand that was to inflict it. That Spuller who had been and was still
thought to be Gambetta’s devoted friend, his right hand, his shadow,
his Achates, should thus have sowed discord between Mme. Adam and
Gambetta seems unaccountable until one considers that, while Spuller
was a fervent deist, Gambetta was constantly inclining more and
more to the extreme anti-clerical side, and to so-called atheists,
represented by such politicians as Paul Bert. Further, after Edmond
Adam’s death in 1877,[313] if rumours may be credited, both Spuller
and Gambetta aspired to marry his widow.[314] Adam himself, in view of
his wife’s impulsive temperament, and well aware how numerous would
be the suitors who, after his death, would solicit her hand, on his
death-bed exacted from her a promise not to remarry for three years.
The promise was unnecessary. Mme. Adam, who has always believed in a
life after death, feels that she and her husband have not been finally
parted. _Nous continuerons à vivre notre vie tous les deux_,[315] were
some of the last words she spoke to him. And in that belief she has
continued faithful to his memory for forty years.
It was after Adam’s death that Spuller committed what one cannot help
regarding as a treacherous betrayal of Gambetta’s confidence. He made
a communication to Mme. Adam which for ever destroyed her belief in
Gambetta as _l’Homme de la Revanche_. On the 23rd of December, 1877,
Spuller wrote from Paris to Mme. Adam at Bruyères[316] that Gambetta
was contemplating an interview with Bismarck at Varzin. Let us say
at once that, as far as we know, the interview never took place. But
that Gambetta ever should have entertained the idea was enough for
Mme. Adam. Apparently the scheme had originated with Count Henckel and
Prince von Hohenlohe,[317] then German Ambassador in Paris. They had
communicated it to Thiers shortly before his death. He had passed it
on to Gambetta.
A few weeks after she had received Spuller’s letter, Gambetta visited
Mme. Adam at Bruyères. He was on his way from a conference at Rome
with the Italian Prime Minister, Crispi, well known to be Bismarck’s
fervent admirer and staunch supporter. Mme. Adam determined,
without betraying Spuller’s confidence, to reproach her friend
with his _politique bismarckienne_. And in the last volume of her
_Souvenirs_[318] she relates that memorable conversation in which she
took him to task not alone for his abandonment of _la Revanche_, but
also for his bitter anti-clerical policy.
They had been wandering along the shore till they found themselves on
the point which forms the extremity of the Baie des Anges. There they
sat down on a rock. Against it, at their feet, the waves were beating
persistently.
Half joking, half in earnest, Mme. Adam said to Gambetta, “That
sighing wave for ever repulsed by the rock is I.”
“And who is the rock?”
“You and your perverse foreign policy.”
“What policy?”
To avoid a direct reply, she asked a question: “And what was your
object in going to Rome if not to seal your Crispian and Bismarckian
policy?”
“I was compelled to choose between two evils: that of national
effacement, called isolation, and that of participation in the
diplomacy of Europe. I chose the latter, because it furnished me with
a support, the importance of which you cannot divine, in my domestic
policy.”
“I do divine it,” she replied. “My Russian friends tell me things
which enable me to draw my own conclusions. But, my dear friend, in
coming to terms with Bismarck (here Gambetta could not refrain from
a movement of surprise, which Mme. Adam feigned not to notice) you
are involving yourself in a _Kulturkampf_ of which Bismarck himself
is weary, for it disintegrates all parties. Your French _Kulturkampf_
may serve Italy and her feud with the papacy, and Victor Emmanuel must
have welcomed you as a friend. But it also benefits Paul Bert, Ranc,
Ferry, Brisson, Clemenceau. Now, although they may call themselves
your friends, they, the two last especially, have only one idea: viz.
to remove you when you have removed all obstacles to the rise of these
demagogues.”
“So you think me Bismarckian because I am anti-clerical.”
“Certain of your restrictions, the change in your way of referring to
our lost provinces, have tortured me. As soon as you refrained from
sympathising with Russia at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War, I
concluded that you had abandoned the idea of _la Revanche_; for the
only way to regain Alsace-Lorraine is by winning the hearts of nations
whose interests like our own render them the enemies of Germany and of
England. This we may do by displaying our sympathy with those nations
in their hours of trial.”
“My dear friend,” remonstrated Gambetta, “you must know that it is
madness to think of reconquering Alsace-Lorraine.”
“Now; yes, I know. But later? Duclerc, whose efficiency and devotion
as president of the army commission you yourself have so often admired
in my presence, constantly tells me we shall be ready in 1880.”
Gambetta shrugged his shoulders and replied impatiently—
“We must experiment in a policy of expansion, we must conquer or by a
tactful neutrality win the equivalent of that we have lost. Afterwards
we shall see. As for my anti-clericalism at home, so much the better
if it furthers my policy abroad. But rest assured, it will not blind
me so far as to risk the loss of the advantage to France of being
regarded as the upholder of Catholic traditions.”
“To carry out so double-faced a policy on a question which is so
vital, surely that is impossible?”
Gambetta was convinced that it was possible. He went on to speak of
Italy, of Victor Emmanuel, of his friendship for France, provided
she would undertake not to restore the Pope’s temporal power, of the
benefits of Italian unity. “Italy,” said Gambetta, “is now what France
once was, a perfect organisation.”
“While with us,” replied Mme. Adam, “the loss of two of our organs is
constantly destroying our equilibrium more and more.... Never shall
we regain it until we have reconquered Alsace-Lorraine, as Italy has
reconquered Lombardy and Venetia. Ah, my friend, how can I tell you my
grief at suspecting you more and more implicated with Germany? You,
our national defender—you, whose words, whose acts galvanised in her
humiliation the France to whom you promised a resurrection, you are
false to your mission! You must forgive me, but the cruel words must
be spoken: you betray your destiny. Never will Bismarck raise you to
that pinnacle of greatness on which you were placed by your fidelity
to Alsace-Lorraine. But I wound you.”
It argues well for Gambetta’s magnanimity and also for his patriotism
that he could hear such reproaches and still remain the friend of her
who uttered them.
“You cannot wound me, my dear friend,” he replied. “For you speak to
me as you must speak—you, an idealist, whom reality does not restrain
from arriving at contradictory conclusions.... You follow the dictates
of your heart, I of my reason. We must each go our road.”
“Mine,” she replied, “is the national road, marked out by the great
proud past of my race; yours is a _combinazione_ with a scoundrel.”
“Whatever our differences,” replied Gambetta, smiling, “let us promise
to remain faithful to our friendship.”
“I swear it,” she replied.
In taking that oath Mme. Adam was sincere. Despite their disagreement
on such vital matters, she valued highly Gambetta’s friendship.
Nevertheless, each pursuing so widely divergent a road, it was
inevitable they should drift apart. The one great disagreement was
magnified by a thousand minor differences. She, who had first made
him _un homme du monde_, grew appalled to observe his increasing
passion for luxury, for ostentation; his susceptibility to the
flatteries of fashionable women who gathered round him; his neglect
of the simple folk from whom he had sprung; his financial and amorous
embarrassments.[319] Now that Adam was no longer at hand to extricate
him from the latter, she did what she could. But it was obvious to
Gambetta that he had forfeited her approval. Their meetings too often
passed in mutual recrimination. Mme. Adam’s disappointment in her
former hero was accentuated by a series of events: first, when on
MacMahon’s fall in 1877, Gambetta, instead of, as she hoped, becoming
President of the Republic, accepted the office of President of the
Chamber; again, when in 1879, as President of the Council, he roused
immense opposition by the irony of appointing as Minister of Public
Worship so pronounced an agnostic as Paul Bert; finally, when after
a few months in this highest political eminence to which he ever
attained, he was defeated on a motion for electoral reform, and went
out of office.
By that time Mme. Adam and Gambetta had ceased to correspond. They met
but seldom.
Of the mystery which surrounds his death in the December of 1882 she
refuses to talk. “We never speak of those things,” she said sadly,
when one day at Gif I referred to them. Equally silent is Mme. Adam
about that veiled figure dominating the background of Gambetta’s later
years, that Mlle. L. L——, who never missed one of Gambetta’s speeches
in the Assembly, whose letters Gambetta used to read to Mme. Adam in
the early years of their friendship.[320]
With her innate cheerfulness she now prefers to dwell on the early
years of her friend’s career, when as an ardent young Bohemian
meridional he was first making his appearance in her salon, or when
at the height of his fame he kept his state at her evening parties,
remaining in an ante-room apart and there receiving in solemn conclave
those whom, as likely to help him in his political designs, his hosts
thought it desirable he should meet. In those days he was still living
with his old Aunt Tata in Paris, and in affectionate intimacy with
his parents and sister in the south. His sister’s sons are to-day
as dear to Mme. Adam as if they were her own. Of one of them, Léon,
the younger, who is now a cavalry officer at the front, she relates
with pride that he has sworn to be the first to ride into reconquered
Strasbourg.
FOOTNOTES:
[288] See Marcel Sembat, _Faites un Roi ou faites le Paix_ (1915),
_passim_.
[289] _Souvenirs_, V. 2.
[290] _Ibid._, IV. 316.
[291] _Mr. Britling Sees it Through_, 378.
[292] _Souvenirs_, VI. 330.
[293] _Ibid._, 198.
[294] _Souvenirs_, VI. 157.
[295] _Ibid._, 182.
[296] _Souvenirs_, VI. 290.
[297] It had been sitting since February 1871.
[298] _Souvenirs_, VI. 226.
[299] _Ibid._, 388.
[300] Henri Galli, _Gambetta et l’Alsace-Lorraine_, p. 315.
[301] Prince von Hohenlohe, _Mémoires_, II. 405.
[302] _Souvenirs_, VI. 16.
[303] _Ibid._, I. 208.
[304] Her references to England in her articles contributed to
_La Nouvelle Revue_ are somewhat contradictory. When a commercial
treaty between our two nations was on foot, she would argue that our
interests are identical. Generally she maintained that we are doomed
to be rivals.
[305] _Souvenirs_, II. 22.
[306] _Ibid._, VI. 405.
[307] p. 9.
[308] _Souvenirs_, VI. 272.
[309] _Ibid._, 405.
[310] _Souvenirs_, V. 297.
[311] _Ibid._, VI. 84.
[312] _Ibid._, VII. 73.
[313] _Souvenirs_, VI. 472.
[314] For those rumours with regard to Gambetta, see _ante_, 186.
[315] _Souvenirs_, VI. 471.
[316] _Ibid._, VII. 112.
[317] See Henri Galli, _Gambetta et l’Alsace-Lorraine_, 314.
[318] _Souvenirs_, VII. 121-7.
[319] See Mme. Adam’s story of the “Affaire de la Rue Roquépine,”
_Souvenirs_, VII. 55-60.
[320] See _ante_, 186; also _Souvenirs_, VI. 80, and _Le cœur de
Gambetta_, by Laur.