“We will invite him,” said Juliette. Nevertheless, before making the final plunge, she took the precaution of consulting her old friend, Hetzel, the publisher, who knew about Gambetta through a mutual friend, Alphonse Daudet, another brilliant young Provençal, who was at that time making his mark in Paris. Hetzel pronounced the _jeune monstre_ to be quite impossible. “You should hear Alphonse Daudet describe Gambetta’s southern clan, the clan of the _bas-midi_, composed of howling Gascons, of blatant windbags of Provençals. He himself a kind of political commercial traveller ... provincial to the marrow of his bones, a provincial grocer withal, one-eyed and _chemisé et cravaté et pantalonné en dégringolade_.” Such a picture gave Mme. Adam pause. But her husband pronounced it a caricature. Alphonse Daudet had only seen Gambetta at restaurants. In Laurent Pichat’s salon he was better. Certainly he was too vehement, but he was not a windbag. So he was invited to one of the Adams’ famous Friday dinner-parties to meet a number of distinguished guests, with most of whom he was previously acquainted: his friend Laurent Pichat, Eugène Pelletan, Jules Ferry,[120] Hetzel, who came to form his own opinion of _le monstre_, those two faithful friends Challemel-Lacour and de Ronchaud, d’Artigues, Duclerc, the Orleanist de Reims. _L’hôte exceptionnel_,[121] as Mme. Adam puts it, was another Orleanist, no less a personage than the grandson of General La Fayette, the Marquis Jules de Lasteyrie. He had fought in Portugal for Don Pedro in 1832; he had sat on the left centre in the Chambre des Députés under Louis Philippe; he had been exiled in 1852, but had returned after the amnesty. Now, backed by Thiers, he was endeavouring, as candidate for Seine et Marne, to re-enter political life. Adam had told the Marquis that he was to meet Gambetta, and full of curiosity, congratulating his hostess on her boldness, Lasteyrie arrived early. “I shall tell Thiers about this party,” he said, “for he is deeply interested in _le jeune monstre_.” Gambetta, imagining that he was going to dine with a blue-stocking, dressed anyhow. He arrived wearing a nondescript kind of coat, with a suggestion of a flannel shirt appearing between his high-buttoned waistcoat and collar.[122] He looked thunderstruck when he saw every one else in evening dress. Eugène Pelletan, who knew him well, presented him to his hostess. Adam was talking in another salon. Gambetta begged Mme. Adam to excuse his not having dressed. “If I had known,” he said. “You would not have come,” she replied, laughing. “That is not nice of you.” M. de Lasteyrie, who was generally most tolerant, whispered in her ear.... “If he had come in a workman’s blouse, I might have passed him ... but ... that!” Jules Lasteyrie was to have taken Mme. Adam in to dinner. “The only way to rehabilitate him, my dear friend,” she said, “is to give him the first place. I deprive you of it. But I am sure you will agree with me.”