Léon Gambetta was now, as the acknowledged leader of that wing of the republican party known as _les Jeunes_, attracting considerable attention. He was a complete meridional, for his parents were a Provençal mother and a father of Genoese origin. He was born in 1837 at Cahors, where his father kept a small grocer’s shop. Léon and one sister were their only children. It having been prophesied to Mme. Gambetta, before her son’s birth, that he would one day be a great man, she denied herself in every way in order to give him the best of educations. He entered the legal profession and went to Paris. There, among the students of the Latin quarter, he rapidly made his mark. No students’ manifestation was complete without him, neither was any fête. He showed a marvellous capacity for repeating verses and drinking beer. He hated the Empire with exuberance, but not with fanaticism. He was well read. Montaigne and Rabelais were his favourite authors, and he was seldom seen without a tattered copy of the latter protruding from his slovenly coat pocket. Passionately interested in public affairs, he hardly missed a sitting of the Corps Legislatif. He was equally assiduous at the Café Voltaire and the Café Procope. There, no matter what subject was under discussion—books, plays, women, or politics—he never failed to monopolise the conversation. Gambetta first appears in Mme. Adam’s _Souvenirs_ when Eugène Pelletan describes him to her as one of the riff-raff of the party (_les voyous du parti_).[117] Later Girardin in Mme. d’Agoult’s salon had praised his exuberance tempered by common sense. “_Vous n’imaginez pas la vitalité de ce gaillard-là_,” said Girardin.[118] “If only he were better put on, I would introduce him to you. But it is impossible. Nevertheless, he is a man of letters.” But soon Juliette began to feel that without _ce gaillard-là, ce jeune monstre, ce dompteur des foules_, as Gambetta was beginning to be called, her _Grand Salon_ was incomplete. Adam was meeting Gambetta constantly at Laurent Pichat’s, and was ever quoting to his wife this rising young demagogue’s astute sayings. “We must introduce him into our circle; you must bring him to me,” said Juliette.[119] “But,” objected Adam, “he is very unfledged. Neither in manner nor in words does he know any restraint. His accent is impossible. He is insolent in discussion. Moreover, I do not wish you to hear him talk of the men of 1848.” For the idealists of 1848, for their lack of worldly wisdom, for their failure to take advantage of the situation they had created, Gambetta did not scruple to express his profound contempt. “But,” interjected Juliette, “is he really out of the common? Is he worth knowing? Yes or no?” “Yes, he is out of the common. He is worth knowing. But he is Bohemian, vulgar, brutal. His manner of life is extraordinary. He is a typical man of the masses, as Danton, _plus retors_. He has an air of authority and dominates the conversation, no matter where he is.”