“_Quand je m’examine_,” she said to Juliette, “_je vois que les deux seules passions de ma vie ont été la maternité et l’amitié_.”[155] After numerous delays and postponements Mme. Sand, accompanied by her son Maurice and her friend Planet, at length, in February 1868, arrived at Bruyères. The date of the visit had been so frequently changed that Juliette and Alice had begun to fear that it might never take place at all. “Cold outside, comfort within, and especially the happiness of living surrounded by one’s family,” writes Mme. Sand to a friend in Paris,[156] “have delayed my journey.” But on the 22nd of February she was able to write to a friend at Toulon from “Golfe Juan, Villa Bruyères.” “We are very comfortably installed, very much spoilt, very energetic, very happy. The day after to-morrow we are going to Nice, Monaco and Mentone. We shall be away three or four days. Consequently you must try not to let your business bring you here before the end of the week. Friday, for example, we are always at home. For on that day Mme. Lamber receives. But if you come on another day you must let us know; for we generally spend the whole day out of doors, and sometimes go a considerable distance.”[157] In picnics, in visits to Monte Carlo and other scenes of gaiety, in sailing in _La Petite Fadette_, the yacht which had been Edmond Adam’s New Year’s gift to his affianced bride, the time passed very pleasantly. George Sand was a fervent geologist and botanist. “Give me a piece of stone,” she would say, “and I will tell you the kind of flora it will produce.” By such means and without visiting the country she is said to have given a background to some of her novels. On one of their picnics Mme. Sand suggested that they should found a new Abbey of Thelema, in which Juliette was to be housekeeper and caterer. And she could not have made a better choice, as will testify all who have tasted of Mme. Adam’s hospitality. The fortnight which Mme. Sand passed on the Golfe Juan was for Juliette one of the happiest in that happy year, 1868, the year of her marriage with Edmond Adam. Bruyères was a home of delight to those who enjoyed its charming hospitality and had the good fortune to stay there. _La Villa du Bon Repos_ some of them christened it, and later it was known as “the Adam’s earthly Paradise.” During the February of 1868 it was the gayest house on the Riviera.