As far as her literary and social life was concerned Juliette’s most ambitious dreams were about to be realised. She was on the way to become a queen of society. True, she had enemies, chiefly pedants like Mme. d’Héricourt and Mlle. Royer, or the friends of Proudhon. No one so convinced, so outspoken as Juliette could avoid arousing opposition. But, with the exception of that little coterie, all hearts were hers, won by her good nature, her charm, her genius for friendship, her vivacity, her intelligence and her loveliness. A leading French journalist, now no longer living, who followed Mme. Adam’s career with interest and admiration, told me that in her youth she was entrancingly beautiful. Referring to the salon she was shortly to establish, to the princes, ambassadors, writers and artists who crowded round the brilliant young hostess, that journalist said: “We were all in love with her.” Moreover Juliette, though an advocate of the rights of woman in days when feminists tended to affect masculine attire, discarded none of her femininity. It has always been her opinion that _Pour une femme, c’est une infériorité que se deféminiser_. She who had been independent enough to abstain from the crinoline, knew how to dress. One of her gowns, velvet _gorge de tourterelle_, with large steel buttons, worn at Alphonse Daudet’s dinner-party, made such an impression on Edmond de Goncourt that he described it in detail, in the pages of that Journal which has now become a classic.[65] It is not surprising that more than one distinguished artist—Flameng, Charpentier, for example—painted Mme. Lamessine’s portrait. Charpentier’s picture was exhibited in the salon. Mme. d’Agoult’s friend, the famous sculptor, Adam Salomon, photographed her in a Charlotte Corday costume, which she had worn at a fancy-dress ball, and wished to model her bust. The photograph was a success, not so the bust. After having made many attempts in clay, the sculptor gave it up. Some time later, however, when Mme. Lamessine was in his studio, he persuaded her to let him take a caste of her face. “It was horrible,” she writes.[66] “I thought I should have been suffocated; and I felt as if my eyebrows and eyelashes were being torn off. The agony of those few seconds when Adam Salomon was piercing holes for my nostrils and making slits for my lips, when I could hardly breath, pursued me for months.” “I quite understand,” she adds, “that a cast of the head and face is not usually taken until after death.”