Gambetta’s week at Bruyères afforded opportunities for many serious discussions. And although the friends were on the whole in perfect accord, we may, in the accounts Mme. Adam gives of these conversations, discern a difference of opinion, slight apparently, yet in reality fundamental, which, though at first a mere rift, was to widen into a chasm and finally to separate them. Mme. Adam even then began to see that the Republic of Gambetta’s dreams was not so Athenian as she thought. Between her aristocratic ideas and his radicalism there was a pronounced difference. She wanted to see the masses led by the _élite_. For Gambetta there was to be no _élite_: the masses were to be educated to guide and govern themselves. “Then we shall sink to their level,” prophesied Juliette. “No, we shall merely stretch out our hands to them,” was Gambetta’s reply.[275] That spring visit to Bruyères was repeated in the following winter (December, 1874) and many times afterwards. Gambetta would arrive tired, worn-out by his political battles and by his electoral campaigns. But he, like Challemel-Lacour and many other exhausted politicians, never failed to find Bruyères _La Villa du Bon Repos_. Perfect restfulness was the order of the day. Lunch was deferred until two, so that the tired guest might sleep till one. Even the house-dog, “Modeste,” was banished to the gardener’s cottage for fear his barkings might disturb the great man’s slumbers. Everything was devised to divert his mind from politics: plays, concerts and those charades in which his hostess excels even to-day in her eighty-first year. During excursions and picnics not a word so much as bearing on politics was permitted to be spoken. Against the crowds of supporters, admirers and curiosity-mongers who would have invaded his solitude his host and hostess protected him with _une energie farouche_.[276] But occasionally not even their devotion could prevent his being compelled to make a speech in the neighbourhood, or on one occasion from the balcony of Bruyères itself. Certain reactionary newspapers did not scruple to attribute a political significance to Gambetta’s visits to Bruyères. They hinted that Marshal MacMahon’s[277] government regarded with disapproval and had even made a raid on one of these _conciliabules_ in order to detect and denounce a civil servant who was present.[278] In the intervals of these visits, and while Mme. Adam was at Bruyères, Gambetta, despite his multifarious occupations and interests, found time to keep her _au courant_ with affairs in Paris by long letters. “He made his Sévigné,” as his friend expressed it, in a delightful manner. At the length of his letters the Adams marvelled. In these lively pages he discussed in detail his own opinions and those of others of the political situation at home and abroad. No one who is interested in Gambetta should neglect to read this correspondence.