To avoid a direct reply, she asked a question: “And what was your object in going to Rome if not to seal your Crispian and Bismarckian policy?” “I was compelled to choose between two evils: that of national effacement, called isolation, and that of participation in the diplomacy of Europe. I chose the latter, because it furnished me with a support, the importance of which you cannot divine, in my domestic policy.” “I do divine it,” she replied. “My Russian friends tell me things which enable me to draw my own conclusions. But, my dear friend, in coming to terms with Bismarck (here Gambetta could not refrain from a movement of surprise, which Mme. Adam feigned not to notice) you are involving yourself in a _Kulturkampf_ of which Bismarck himself is weary, for it disintegrates all parties. Your French _Kulturkampf_ may serve Italy and her feud with the papacy, and Victor Emmanuel must have welcomed you as a friend. But it also benefits Paul Bert, Ranc, Ferry, Brisson, Clemenceau. Now, although they may call themselves your friends, they, the two last especially, have only one idea: viz. to remove you when you have removed all obstacles to the rise of these demagogues.” “So you think me Bismarckian because I am anti-clerical.” “Certain of your restrictions, the change in your way of referring to our lost provinces, have tortured me. As soon as you refrained from sympathising with Russia at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War, I concluded that you had abandoned the idea of _la Revanche_; for the only way to regain Alsace-Lorraine is by winning the hearts of nations whose interests like our own render them the enemies of Germany and of England. This we may do by displaying our sympathy with those nations in their hours of trial.” “My dear friend,” remonstrated Gambetta, “you must know that it is madness to think of reconquering Alsace-Lorraine.” “Now; yes, I know. But later? Duclerc, whose efficiency and devotion as president of the army commission you yourself have so often admired in my presence, constantly tells me we shall be ready in 1880.” Gambetta shrugged his shoulders and replied impatiently— “We must experiment in a policy of expansion, we must conquer or by a tactful neutrality win the equivalent of that we have lost. Afterwards we shall see. As for my anti-clericalism at home, so much the better if it furthers my policy abroad. But rest assured, it will not blind me so far as to risk the loss of the advantage to France of being regarded as the upholder of Catholic traditions.” “To carry out so double-faced a policy on a question which is so vital, surely that is impossible?” Gambetta was convinced that it was possible. He went on to speak of Italy, of Victor Emmanuel, of his friendship for France, provided she would undertake not to restore the Pope’s temporal power, of the benefits of Italian unity. “Italy,” said Gambetta, “is now what France once was, a perfect organisation.”