Yet another blow was in store for her; and again it was Spuller’s hand that was to inflict it. That Spuller who had been and was still thought to be Gambetta’s devoted friend, his right hand, his shadow, his Achates, should thus have sowed discord between Mme. Adam and Gambetta seems unaccountable until one considers that, while Spuller was a fervent deist, Gambetta was constantly inclining more and more to the extreme anti-clerical side, and to so-called atheists, represented by such politicians as Paul Bert. Further, after Edmond Adam’s death in 1877,[313] if rumours may be credited, both Spuller and Gambetta aspired to marry his widow.[314] Adam himself, in view of his wife’s impulsive temperament, and well aware how numerous would be the suitors who, after his death, would solicit her hand, on his death-bed exacted from her a promise not to remarry for three years. The promise was unnecessary. Mme. Adam, who has always believed in a life after death, feels that she and her husband have not been finally parted. _Nous continuerons à vivre notre vie tous les deux_,[315] were some of the last words she spoke to him. And in that belief she has continued faithful to his memory for forty years. It was after Adam’s death that Spuller committed what one cannot help regarding as a treacherous betrayal of Gambetta’s confidence. He made a communication to Mme. Adam which for ever destroyed her belief in Gambetta as _l’Homme de la Revanche_. On the 23rd of December, 1877, Spuller wrote from Paris to Mme. Adam at Bruyères[316] that Gambetta was contemplating an interview with Bismarck at Varzin. Let us say at once that, as far as we know, the interview never took place. But that Gambetta ever should have entertained the idea was enough for Mme. Adam. Apparently the scheme had originated with Count Henckel and Prince von Hohenlohe,[317] then German Ambassador in Paris. They had communicated it to Thiers shortly before his death. He had passed it on to Gambetta. A few weeks after she had received Spuller’s letter, Gambetta visited Mme. Adam at Bruyères. He was on his way from a conference at Rome with the Italian Prime Minister, Crispi, well known to be Bismarck’s fervent admirer and staunch supporter. Mme. Adam determined, without betraying Spuller’s confidence, to reproach her friend with his _politique bismarckienne_. And in the last volume of her _Souvenirs_[318] she relates that memorable conversation in which she took him to task not alone for his abandonment of _la Revanche_, but also for his bitter anti-clerical policy. They had been wandering along the shore till they found themselves on the point which forms the extremity of the Baie des Anges. There they sat down on a rock. Against it, at their feet, the waves were beating persistently. Half joking, half in earnest, Mme. Adam said to Gambetta, “That sighing wave for ever repulsed by the rock is I.” “And who is the rock?” “You and your perverse foreign policy.” “What policy?”