In a week spent in Paris at the end of 1876 Sir Charles stayed with Gambetta, and took occasion to bring about a meeting between him and Sir William and Lady Harcourt, who were also in Paris. With Sir William Harcourt was his son and inseparable companion Mr. Lewis Harcourt, who recalls a day when Sir Charles said to him: "Now, Loulou, I want you to come and have lunch with me by yourself; I'm not asking your father and mother to-day." He remembers his pride in going off to the Café Anglais, where they were met by a man with a big black beard. "This, Loulou, is Monsieur Gambetta." The two men talked, and the boy listened, as he was well used to do, for in those days he constantly "ran about beside his father like a little dog." After lunch they went for a drive, and still the men talked, and Gambetta pointed to the window from which he had proclaimed the Republic, and Dilke showed where he had lain for half a day while the French troops were besieging the French of Paris. The boy listened eagerly--to understand, years after, how the whole drive had been planned for his edification and delight. Since August, 1876, Gambetta had been talking of a visit, proposing, says Sir Charles, to "come to me in town, and probably bring Challemel-Lacour also to 76, Sloane Street." The visit was to be purely private and social; "he will receive no deputations, no addresses, and will visit no provincial towns." 'It was in 1876 that he sent to me a certain Gérard, who became French reader to the Empress Augusta of Germany, and it is supposed that the somewhat brilliant volume called _The Society of Berlin_, long afterwards published under the name of _Count Paul Vasili_ by Madame Adam (although not the later volumes of the same series, which were by Vandam), was from Gérard's pen. Gambetta, when he came to power as Prime Minister, appointed Gérard, who was then in the Legation at Washington, his private secretary, Georges Pallain being the second, and Joseph Reinach the third. But Pallain and Reinach, in fact, exercised the functions, because Gambetta fell before Gérard arrived. Gérard is now (1909) an Ambassador.' Just before Dilke's visit to Gambetta in the spring of 1877 another indication of his popularity in France occurred. 'Gavard had come to me from the French Embassy to ask me whether I should like to go to Paris with Sir Louis Mallet to arrange a new French Treaty, as "his Government would like me."' The proposal fell through. As Sir Charles said, 'the Government could not well, I think, have sent two Liberals at the head of the Commission.' Mallet