Of course there were ugly scenes: ferocity resulting from the pangs of hunger, wild lawlessness arising from the relaxation of the bonds of family discipline in a time of so much distress. Juliette, with an idealist’s determination in an hour of heroic struggle to see only what is best in her fellow-men, passes lightly over such incidents, leaving them for de Goncourt’s more realistic pen. She was even prepared to condone drunkenness, because it frequently arose from scarcity of food.[205] Nevertheless, she cannot refrain from remonstrating with an intoxicated National Guard. “I cannot bear to see a citizen of the Republic drunk,” she exclaimed. “The Republic! ... a citizen! ... no, I will never get tipsy again,” hiccuped the drunkard.[206] The artists, the actors and actresses of Paris were among those who laboured hardest at doing their bit. “You would expect it of them,” writes Mme. Adam. They had been so far from becoming Buonapartiste. And she relates how Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, who had organised a hospital in the Odéon Theatre, _se conduit en femme de grand cœur_. Juliette herself, by her untiring efforts to alleviate distress, won for herself the title of _Notre Dame de Bon Secours_. Besides having billeted on her three recruits from Auvergne, she nursed back to health in her flat a wounded convalescent soldier, and later, during the bombardment, she gave harbourage to a poor girl who had fled in panic from the outskirts of the city. Much of Mme. Adam’s time was occupied in organising and directing two societies, _L’Œuvre des Fourneaux_, which provided the poor with cheap meals, and _L’Œuvre du Travail des Femmes_, destined to help poor sempstresses by enabling them to possess sewing-machines of their own. With amazing endurance, though racked by her old enemies neuralgia and rheumatism, Mme. Adam kept up her energy and her spirits. For nine years she had been accustomed to spend the winter in the south. In November 1870 she had written: “In normal days we should now be preparing to go to Bruyères.” But, alas! for her there was to be no southern sunshine that winter. Such a deprivation alone could naturally not fail to tell upon her health. Then came, on the 2nd of December, the terrible disappointment of Champigny, the sortie which had raised so many hopes only to dash them to the ground. But it was not until January that Juliette was driven to admit to herself that she was ill and must stay in bed. The bombardment of Paris had begun on the 6th of January. It continued for a nightmare of three weeks. As early as the 7th of November, Nefftzer, at no time a prophet of smooth things, had foretold the bombardment. He predicted that bombs might fall even on the centre of Paris, probably on the Institute. “Am I afraid?” Juliette had written in her diary under that date.