“Between Paris and Versailles,” wrote Adam to his wife, “there is something more than the Great Wall of China, there is something more than a hundred leagues, there is a hundred years, a whole century.”[239] Nevertheless, throughout those hideous two months from the outbreak of insurrection to the fall of the Commune at the end of May, Edmond Adam, deputy of Paris, braving the dangers of arrest and execution, continued to pass to and fro, between the revolted city and Versailles, ever hoping that he might be able to facilitate some compromise between the rival authorities. From an interview with his old friend Thiers, however, he derived no encouragement. He feared that the President’s chief desire was to appear in the eyes of the world as conqueror of provincial France and of the Revolution at Paris.[240] Of her husband’s attitude Mme. Adam strongly approved. “You owe it to Paris,” she wrote. “For to Paris you are indebted for everything since the day when you first joined the staff of the _National_. Paris has chosen you for its representative. Paris, though misguided, is well worth the risk you are running for her.”[241] But Juliette longed to share her husband’s dangers. Alice, after weeks of agonising suspense, had been restored to her. “Alice and Bibi might well,” she wrote to Adam, “be left in the care of M. and Mme. Arlès Dufour,” _le père_ and _la mère_, as Juliette called them, who were still at Bruyères. For was it not the place of a deputy’s wife to be at his side in the city which had elected him? Banished from Adam and from her friends her exile was intolerable. But her husband replied that he could not endure the anxiety of her presence in Paris; that while he was obliged to be at Versailles the thought of her in the revolted city, a prey to the horrors of that terrific insurrection, would drive him mad. “My only strength,” he continued, “arises from the thought that you are far from the terrible events which threaten us. Our friends think it is the end of the world. But I am resolved, even in this cataclysm, not entirely to despair. In all the darkness and chaos, I seem to discern a ray of hope. As for us, deputies of a capital in insurrection, our situation becomes terrifically difficult. I am on the boulevard this evening. But shall I be to-morrow? Every one is trying to persuade me to abandon my daily journey, which is so likely to be interrupted either at Paris or at Versailles.”