It was in 1874, as I have already mentioned, that on an introduction from Matthew Arnold we first made friends with M. Edmond Scherer, the French writer and Senator, who more than any other person--unless, perhaps, one divides the claim between him and M. Faguet--stepped into the critical chair of Sainte Beuve, after that great man's death. For M. Scherer's weekly reviews in the _Temps_ (1863-78) were looked for by many people over about fifteen years, as persons of similar tastes had looked for the famous "Lundis," in the _Constitutionnel_ of an earlier generation. We went out to call upon the Scherers at Versailles, coupling with it, if I remember right, a visit to the French National Assembly then sitting in the Chateau. The road from the station to the palace was deep in snow, and we walked up behind two men in ardent conversation, one of them gesticulating freely. My husband asked a man beside us, bound also, it seemed, for the Assembly, who they were. "M. Gambetta and M. Jules Favre," was the answer. So there we had in front of us the intrepid organizer of the Government of National Defense, whose services to France France will never forget, and the unfortunate statesman to whom it fell, under the tyrannic and triumphant force of Germany (which was to prove, as we now know, in the womb and process of time, more fatal to herself than to France!), to sign away Alsace-Lorraine. And we had only just settled ourselves in our seats when Gambetta was in the tribune, making a short but impassioned speech. I but vaguely remember what the speech was about, but the attitude of the lion head thrown back, and the tones of the famous voice, remain with me--as it rang out in the recurrent phrase: _"Je proteste!--Messieurs, je proteste!"_ It was the attitude of the statue in the Place du Carrousel, and of the _meridional_, Numa Roumestan, in Daudet's well-known novel. Every word said by the speaker seemed to enrage the benches of the Right, and the tumult was so great at times that we were still a little dazed by it when we reached the quiet of the Scherers' drawing-room.