They pleaded long and earnestly both then and afterward.  He urged a civil marriage, but she declared that only a marriage according to the rites of the Church could ever purify her past and give her back her self-respect.  In this she was absolutely stubborn, yet she did not urge upon Gambetta that he should destroy his influence by marrying her in church.

Through all this interplay of argument and pleading and emotion the two grew every moment more hopelessly in love.  Then the woman, with a woman’s curious subtlety and indirectness, reached a somewhat singular conclusion.  She would hear nothing of a civil marriage, because a civil marriage was no marriage in the eyes of Pope and prelate.  On the other hand, she did not wish Gambetta to mar his political career by going through a religious ceremony.  She had heard from a priest that the Church recognized two forms of betrothal.  The usual one looked to a marriage in the future and gave no marriage privileges until after the formal ceremony.  But there was another kind of betrothal known to the theologians as sponsalia de praesente.  According to this, if there were an actual betrothal, the pair might have the privileges and rights of marriage immediately, if only they sincerely meant to be married in the future.

The eager mind of Leonie Leon caught at this bit of ecclesiastical law and used it with great ingenuity.

“Let us,” she said, “be formally betrothed by the interchange of a ring, and let us promise each other to marry in the future.  After such a betrothal as this we shall be the same as married; for we shall be acting according to the laws of the Church.”

Gambetta gladly gave his promise.  A betrothal ring was purchased; and then, her conscience being appeased, she gave herself completely to her lover.  Gambetta was sincere.  He said to her: 

“If the time should ever come when I shall lose my political station, when I am beaten in the struggle, when I am deserted and alone, will you not then marry me when I ask you?”

And Leonie, with her arms about his neck, promised that she would.  Yet neither of them specified what sort of marriage this should be, nor did it seem at the moment as if the question could arise.

For Gambetta was very powerful.  He led his party to success in the election of 1877.  Again and again his triumphant oratory mastered the National Assembly of France.  In 1879 he was chosen to be president of the Chamber of Deputies.  He towered far above the president of the republic—­Jules Grevy, that hard-headed, close-fisted old peasant—­and his star had reached its zenith.

All this time he and Leonie Leon maintained their intimacy, though it was carefully concealed save from a very few.  She lived in a plain but pretty house on the Avenue Perrichont in the quiet quarter of Auteuil; but Gambetta never came there.  Where and when they met was a secret guarded very carefully by the few who were his close associates.  But meet they did continually, and their affection grew stronger every year.  Leonie thrilled at the victories of the man she loved; and he found joy in the hours that he spent with her.