There were many speculations as to who would be charged by Grevy to form his first cabinet—­and almost permanent meetings in all the groups of the Left.  W.’s friends all said he would certainly remain at the Foreign Office, but that depended naturally upon the choice of the premier.  If he were taken from the more advanced ranks of the Left, W. could not possibly stay.  We were not long in suspense.  W. had one or two interviews with Grevy, which resulted in his remaining at the Foreign Office, but as prime minister.  W. hesitated at first, felt that it would not be an easy task to keep all those very conflicting elements together.  There were four Protestants in the ministry, W., Leon Say, de Freycinet, and Le Royer.  Jules Ferry, who took the Ministry of Public Instruction, a very clever man, was practically a freethinker, and the Parliament was decidedly more advanced.  The last elections had given a strong Republican majority to the Senate.  He consulted with his brother, Richard Waddington, then a deputy, afterward a senator, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Rouen, and some of his friends, and finally decided to accept the very honourable, but very onerous position, and remained at the Foreign Affairs with Grevy, as prime minister.

If I had seen little of him before, I saw nothing of him now, as his work was exactly doubled.  We did breakfast together, but it was a most irregular meal—­sometimes at twelve o’clock, sometimes at one-thirty, and very rarely alone.  We always dined out or had people dining with us, so that family life became a dream of the past.  We very rarely went together when we dined out.  W. was always late—­his coupe waited hours in the court.  I had my carriage and went alone.  After eight or ten days of irregular meals at impossible hours (we often dined at nine-thirty) I said to Count de P., W.’s chef de cabinet:  “Can’t you arrange to have business over a little earlier?  It is awful to dine so late and to wait so long,” to which he replied:  “Ah, madame, no one can be more desirous than I to change that order of things, for when the minister dines at nine-thirty, the chef de cabinet gets his dinner at ten-thirty.”  We did manage to get rather more satisfactory hours after a little while, but it was always difficult to extract W. from his work if it were anything important.  He became absorbed, and absolutely unconscious of time.

The new President, Grevy, installed himself at once at the Elysee with his wife and daughter.  There was much speculation about Madame Grevy—­no one had ever seen her—­she was absolutely unknown.  When Grevy was president of the National Assembly, he gave very pleasant men’s dinners, where Madame Grevy never appeared.  Every one (of all opinions) was delighted to go to him, and the talk was most brilliant and interesting.  Grevy was a perfect host, very cultivated, with a marvellous memory—­quoting pages of the classics, French, and Latin.