Mme. Adam and Anatole France remained friends until the Dreyfus affair. Then, like so many other friends, they parted company. Mme. Adam’s nationalism involved antagonism to the Jews, whom she believed incapable of espousing the cause of any race but their own. It involved also a belief that the army can do no wrong. Hence she regarded as final the court-martial’s condemnation of Alfred Dreyfus. Anatole France, on the other hand, who was at that time _le grand homme_ of a famous Semitic salon, became a fervent Dreyfusard. The _Affaire_ resulted in a curious reshuffle in French social and political life. M. France found himself ranged with some who had once been his enemies. One of these was Émile Zola. In the past, his gross realism had outraged the classical and aristocratic taste of M. France as much as it had that of Mme. Adam. But now, battling in a common cause, these two former foes found one another by no means antipathetic. While reconciled with old enemies, however, M. France found himself parted from old friends; not from Mme. Adam only, but from one who had been a close comrade of his earlier literary career, from Paul Bourget. With Pierre Loti and with her whom they were both proud to call their intellectual mother, M. Bourget took the nationalist side. He also, disappointed with the Republic’s failure to realise his ideals, was turning Romewards. We may regard him, with Mme. Adam, as the first fruits of that Catholic revival which was to be the dominant note of French intellectual society in the early twentieth century. FOOTNOTES: [344] _Souvenirs_, VII. 87. [345] _Souvenirs_, VI. 470. [346] _Ibid._, VII. 241. [347] _Ibid._, 331. [348] _Souvenirs_, III. 227. [349] _Ibid._, VII. 321. [350] _Souvenirs_, VII. 365. [351] _Souvenirs_, VII. 404. [352] _Ibid._, 366. [353] _Ibid._, 392. [354] _Souvenirs_, VII. 324. [355] _Après l’Abandon de la Revanche._ CHAPTER XVII VIEWS ON FOREIGN POLITICS 1878-1917 “_La Politique extérieure qui a toujours été la grande préoccupation, le grand apprentissage de ma vie._”—Mme. Edmond Adam, _Souvenirs_, VII. 218. A fortnight after the appearance of the first number of _La Nouvelle Revue_, on the 17th of December, 1879, Émile de Girardin gave a dinner-party; _un dîner de gala_ it was called by Mme. Adam, who was one of the guests. Among other distinguished persons present were Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone and Gambetta.[356] At dessert the talk fell on the new review; and Mr. Gladstone asked the editress what were its objects. “I have three,” she replied: “to oppose Bismarck, to demand the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, and to lift from the minds of our young writers the shadow of depression cast by national defeat by giving them fame ten years earlier than they would otherwise have acquired it.” “And you expect to accomplish your three objects?” Mr. Gladstone inquired.