Two months earlier, at the urgent request of Thiers and Gambetta, she had reopened her salon and resumed her Wednesday and Friday dinner-parties. Now for some days after this triumphant election she had received her friends every evening. Gambetta had declared his readiness to lead the 330 republican deputies into the very heart of the citadel. Somehow or other the conservative ministers must be got rid of. They on their part were trying to persuade MacMahon to carry out another _coup d’état_. Gambetta and some of his friends were resolved in such an event to appeal to force. A discussion on this subject took place in Mme. Adam’s salon.[283] There, one evening, Girardin announced: “Fortou is preparing his _coup d’état_.” Fortou was Minister of the Interior in the _seize Mai_ Cabinet. “Voisin (Préfet de Police) has told me,” continued Girardin, “that at any moment he may receive orders to arrest us all. He will not do so; he will send in his resignation. But on the day of that resignation we may all be arrested. And no doubt they will select one of Mme. Adam’s evenings for the raid.” “Very well,” replied the Admiral Jauréguiberry, “we must prepare to defend ourselves.” “With arms?” inquired Girardin. “Why, of course,” replied the Admiral briefly. “I was disappointed,” writes Mme. Adam, “to discover the timidity of some who were present. I became furious and cried out: ‘After all, one risks nothing worse than death in defending oneself.’ “My two hands were seized by General Billot and shaken violently, with an exclamation of ‘Bravo, comrade!’ which made me very proud.” It was an amplification of this scene, doubtless, which caused the appearance in one of the newspapers of an article entitled “Attack on La Maison Sallandrouze.” Happily, however, the expected raid never took place, for civil strife was averted. MacMahon, far from arresting Mme. Adam’s friends, called on them to form a government. The Dufaure Cabinet came into office in December 1877. Most of the new ministers were habitués of Mme. Adam’s salon. The new Minister of Public Works, M. de Freycinet,[284] was Gambetta’s rival in her friendship. While for her Friday dinner-parties the Great Tribune in consultation with his hostess chose such fellow-guests as were likely to serve _ce pouvoir occulte_, which this statesman out of office was beginning to exercise, the Wednesday dinners were known as “The Freycinet Evenings.” Mme. Adam’s friendship with M. de Freycinet has endured to the present day. Already, in the middle seventies, “so bleached,” writes Sir Sidney Colvin, “as to be known as _la souris blanche_,” he has lived to be a member of the War Cabinet of 1916.