Gambetta stayed there a week, going over occasionally to visit his parents and sister, who were then living at Nice. Mme. Adam had made their acquaintance some time earlier. She found them excellent people of the shop-keeping class. Mme. Gambetta, a Frenchwoman of _la bonne bourgeoisie_, but with no dowry to speak of, had, as we have said, married a grocer of Genoese origin, who was then in business at Cahors. But when Mme. Adam first made the family’s acquaintance they were living at Nice. The household consisted of Gambetta’s father and mother, a widowed sister, Benedetta, her little boy Léon, and a servant, who, having entered the Gambettas’ service at thirteen, was regarded as one of the family. Gambetta’s aunt, the famous “Tata,” had followed her nephew to Paris. His mother, Mme. Adam could see at a glance, lived, moved and had her being in her celebrated son. She was proud to relate how before his birth she had consulted a soothsayer, a somnambulist, who had declared her about to be the mother of a man who would govern France. Gambetta’s relatives remained Mme. Adam’s life-long friends. They frequently visited Bruyères. She helped them in various ways, and at Gambetta’s request arranged a second marriage for his widowed sister, who became Mme. Léris; and when she is in the south of France Mme. Adam never fails to go and see her. Mme. Léris is now living at Cahors, in what was formerly a monastic dwelling. She is surrounded by relics of her famous brother, trophies presented to him on great public occasions, which contrast strangely with the ecclesiastical fitments of the house. One day in 1915, when I arrived at Gif, I found Mme. Adam reading a letter she had just received from Gambetta’s sister. This curious, original and highly entertaining document I was permitted to read. It showed plainly that though all the family money had been spent on the son’s education, by no means all the gifts had been showered upon him, for a plentiful dower of wit, common sense and originality has evidently fallen to the lot of Mme. Benedetta. But here we are anticipating. We must leave Mme. Léris and go back to the year 1874, when her illustrious brother was visiting Bruyères. Mme. Adam found Gambetta as delightful a guest as George Sand. She, by the way, was one of his bitterest foes. She regarded him as nothing but a windbag, _un simple utilisateur_.[274] Gambetta’s voracious appetite, challenging comparison with that of the hero of his favourite author, Rabelais, did full justice to the good cheer which Mme. Adam never fails to put before her guests. He ate well, he drank well, and he enjoyed, to the full, all the picnics and the excursions which were planned for his entertainment, even the sailings in the barque named after one of his arch-enemy’s masterpieces, _La Petite Fadette_, and which ought, if there had been any consistency in the cosmos, to have foundered and shipwrecked one, at any rate, of its passengers.