Now that in her glorified Bruyères Juliette had three guest-chambers instead of one, she could receive numerous friends from Paris. During this winter Garnier-Pagès, one of her husband’s old friends, a man of “1848,” one of the founders of the Comptoir d’Escompte, came with his family, and Juliette’s publisher Hetzel. On the Golfe Juan, as at Paris, Mme. Adam gathered her friends round her; and Bruyères became a veritable salon, with Prosper Mérimée for its _grand homme_. Of this illustrious writer, in the evening of his days, Mme. Adam in her _Souvenirs_[131] paints a striking picture. She draws to the life his elegant figure, always well put on. He affected grey trousers, white waistcoats, large soft blue cravats tied in an artistic bow. She describes his eyeglasses, well posed on _un nez qu’on ne voyait qu’à lui tant la forme en était particulière_, his wrinkled, careworn forehead, his thick eyebrows, which gave him a cold, haughty and somewhat severe air. There was something English about his appearance. His mother was an Englishwoman, and he loved England. It was an admirable country, he used to say, where reforms proposed by liberals are executed by conservatives. This statement, which like most generalisations is more striking than accurate, was natural to an observer of British politics so soon after the Reform Bill of 1867. [Illustration: THE VILLA BRUYÈRES, ON THE GOLFE JUAN, MADAME ADAM’S RIVIERA HOME] Each winter Mérimée and Juliette Adam became better friends. He paid her one of the compliments she appreciated most when he told Dr. Maure that she had made him understand fraternity.[132] She enjoyed his conversation immensely. “A talk with Mérimée,” she writes, “is always full of surprises,[133] so wide is his knowledge and of a quality so superior.” His eclecticism delighted her. He belonged to no school, but was ready to appreciate anything that appealed to him, modern or ancient, idealist or realist, romantic or classical. His _bête noir_ was exaggeration. He was artistic to the finger-tips. He detested the photographic method of treating life and nature. “Every artist at the beginning of his life,” he would say, “must, I admit, be carried away by passion, by rapture, but before long he must deny himself any ecstasy which might cloud his imagination and dim his vision of reality; he must retain of his passion only so much as is necessary for its description.” Mérimée, like Juliette’s friend Flaubert, was a heroic worker. He would not hesitate to rewrite a page ten times. A term erased seemed to him but “a jumping-off place from which to reach _le mot juste_.” Mme. Adam highly prized the lessons he gave her on style. In general conversation he was not at his best. However interesting the subject might be, he was ill at ease if the speaker did not appeal to him. He would assume a frigid manner. On the other hand, if the speaker pleased him, he would hasten to pour forth all the treasures of his accumulated reflections.