active 19th century M. Colmache

“ After a youth spent in burning vows, in oaths and protestations of what would be his achievements, should he ever be freed from that sombre habit and that slavish tonsure—with a heart beating high with courage, a soul burning for honour and distinction, no sooner had he obtained the freedom for which he had so long sighed, than he hastened to bury all hope, ambition, and liberty beneath the cowl and lowly gabardine of the Trappist. It is evident that his boiling imagination and ardent fancy had been struck with the charms and matchless grace of Marie Antoinette as soon as he had beheld her ”

“ The hatred and suspicion which he had so craftily engendered in the bosom of the queen against her son, had compelled her to fill the palace with troops, all devoted to herself and to Godoï. It was his design when, by the rules of etiquette established at the Spanish court, the exact moment arrived for the heir to the throne to appear at the bedside of the dying king, to have the young prince arrested, and to make him sign by force the necessary decree, which would place the whole power in the hands of the favourite. ”

“ The day of reckoning arrived at last; the château—the park—the gardens of Passy, were one morning filled with the emissaries of the police; every closet and cellar underwent a thorough scrutiny; the servants were strictly examined; but M. de Boulainvilliers laughed to scorn every attempt at detection; for he alone of all the household was in the secret of the illicit still. Disappointed and confused, the officers were retiring to report upon the fruitlessness of their errand, when Jeanne came bursting into the apartment, exclaiming, ‘I know where it is—I know it—this way, gentlemen—this way! ”

“ There is yet so much mystery, so much which has been withheld from public scrutiny, in all the great political changes which have taken place, that there will be as much novelty in the plain, straight-forward narrative of the causes which led to their occurrence, as though they were events of yesterday. From the very first years of the reign of Louis Seize, when the tone and manners of society yet smacked of the wild and dissolute freedom of the Regency, to the restraint and affectation of the Restoration, has M. de Talleyrand always borne a part in public affairs. ”

“ RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY LIFE, BY PRINCE TALLEYRAND.
“It is a most extraordinary circumstance,” said I to C., one evening, as we sat together in the little turret-chamber, “that no well-authenticated life of the prince has ever been written. It would, I have no doubt, attract more attention than any work of the kind which has appeared for years. Why do you not attempt the task? You are better qualified, from the length of time you have been in his intimacy, from your very admiration of the man, to undertake the task, than any one else now living.” ”

“ Oh, come along quick! it is in full glory at this very moment—the fire blazing—the sparks flying splendidly; two men were at the bellows when I left!’
The consternation, the rage, the terror which these words produced, cannot be described. M. le Marquis was hurried off to prison, amid the laughter of the officers and the sobs and tears of the Marquise; while poor Jeanne received, with astonishment, the furious kicks and cuffs of the marquis, instead of the thanks and praises to which she deemed herself entitled. ”

“ The entrance of the brave bailli into that solitary175 village must have caused quite a sensation; and I have heard that the whole scene has remained graven on the powerful memory of the prince, as though it had occurred but yesterday. He will sometimes recount it to his intimates, and laugh at the singularity of the circumstances; but that laugh, believe me, must be one of bitterness and scorn. No wonder that this man should have felt such strange contempt for his fellow man—no wonder that he should at times have acted as though he fancied that he alone existed in the world. ”

“ M. de Talleyrand, with all his boasted perspicacity, his foresight, and his justesse d’esprit, would have considered it as a mauvaise plaisanterie that a man sans position sociale, an homme de rien, should ever be considered eligible as a leader of public affairs in a country like France.
“M. Thiers was, in the eyes of M. de Talleyrand, nothing more than a young writer, full of vigour and talent, whom the old seigneur loved to protect, and to initiate into the manners and customs of good society, without a knowledge of which (he would often say) there can be no good taste in literature. ”

“ His intercourse with them has ever been frank and free. As he never played the part of a hypocrite with them, so has he never had to fear detection, or to dread an encounter with those who could tell of his early life.
“There is something touching in the candour and simplicity with which the prince will sometimes converse of Saint Sulpice with the individual to whom I now allude: the only one of his class-fellows with whom he has maintained any degree of intimacy, and whom he has bound to himself by ties of the deepest gratitude. ”

“ It would be difficult for a painter to imagine a scene more interesting, or even more poetical, than the one which thus suddenly presented itself to me. The long golden hair of the child fell forward in a glittering shower, blending with the silvery masses which, to the latest hour of his life, shaded in such luxuriant abundance the calm brow of the prince ”

“ No man was ever made the object of so much unjust vituperation as the Prince de Talleyrand, of calumnies which have been accepted by the credulous with as much good faith as proofs of holy writ; while not one single proof of perfidy or baseness has ever been brought against him—nothing but supposition, for the most part ill-sustained, and sometimes even completely belied by his subsequent conduct. Notwithstanding the apparent freedom with which he admitted all his entourage to his intimates, how little is really known of his private life! ”

“ At Louis le Grand he had been surrounded by the bold, ambitious spirits of the rising generation of that day, boys of all classes of society, all animated with the same eager desire for distinction, and, each in his degree, with the same thirst for glory. Even these children were awaking to the conviction that a new light was about to break upon the world, that the triumph of mind over matter was nigh at hand, and that the power of brute force must yield at length to the mightier power of intellect. ”

“ The sole biographer of Prince Talleyrand must be Prince Talleyrand himself. Any clever, well-informed historian might give the facts of the prince’s life, but who but himself could render to posterity a satisfactory account of the motives which had led to action, the consequences which have accrued from the various decisions which he has taken, and which, in most instances, as he himself is always declaring, have been totally in opposition to the results foreseen? ”

“ But the devil’s hoof, which certainly is busy with all men’s concerns, trotted one day through the muddled brain of the old Dowager de Marville, and suggested to her that it would be a mighty pleasant thing to have a feu d’artifice in the Bois de Bologne, on some dark night when there would be no moon, and that it would be quite a funny sight to behold all the skirts of the wood festooned with coloured lamps, and adorned with flambeaux; and then she began to torment M. de B. to throw open his ‘Folie’ to the élite, and give a fête there to his friends without delay. ”

“ This, to a proud, sarcastic temper like that of the prince, must have been peculiarly annoying, the more so as Napoleon, with the gross, soldier-like want of tact which he would sometimes display, loved to remind him both of the immensity of the service, and by whom it had been rendered, and then would laugh coarsely to see him wince under the reproach, which all his wonted philosophy did not enable him to bear with calmness. ”

“ These are the reminiscences which must henceforth render Valençay one of those few favoured spots, scattered here and there over the surface of our dull earth, towards which fancy hurries on before, and where Memory lingers long behind; places that shine out, amid the dulness of this dreary world, with the bright lustre which the memory of the great and good has shed around them, and which, to the traveller through the land where they are found, become hallowed shrines, that it is scorn and reproach to have visited the country without beholding. ”

“ At length, Count Molé approached, and leant over the back of the prince’s chair. He spoke, in the very ear of the prince, a confidential whisper, which the mayor heard, however, distinctly, so close had he drawn to the illustrious friends.
“‘Prince,’ said the count, ‘have you forgotten old times and all our fierce encounters? Come, and renew our skill at billiards in the next room; it will make us both all the younger by twenty years!’
“Billiards! the Prince de Talleyrand play at billiards! it could not be; he should have imagined that his lameness would have saved him from that. ”

“ She was an invaluable specimen of the old insolent noblesse; and after a day spent in her company, you might retire to rest, no longer wondering at the horrors of the great revolution, nor yet at the hatred by which they had been instigated.
On one occasion, she had nearly set the whole province in an uproar by an unseasonable display of what the prince was wont to call her impertinence Régence. A large party had been invited to dinner at the château, a party in honour of the arrival of some high and illustrious visitor at Valençay; I think there were even scions of royalty among the guests. ”

“ Prince Talleyrand has left a name in Europe perhaps the greatest ever achieved by any man in France who has devoted himself exclusively to the civil offices of the state. In the present century, he has become as great a diplomatic authority as was Machiavelli in the sixteenth; and hence the Hôtel Talleyrand, in the Rue St. Florentin, has been regarded by every disciple of state-craft who has visited the French capital, with perhaps as much veneration as the literary devotee accords to the more humble abode at Stratford of the great master of English poetry. ”

“ To his utter astonishment, after having with difficulty regained his own room, and thence by the inner passages of the house arrived at the chamber of his wife, he found her up and dressed, still decked with the same jewels which she had worn at the fête. She evinced great alarm and trepidation at first, on hearing his recital, but, after a moment’s reflection, declared her belief that M. de B—— must have been under the influence of a dream, as she had herself been standing at the window taking the air, and had heard no sound nor beheld any shadow pass. ”

“ The prince and M. are like two schoolboys, hating, dreading each other, yet each one feeling that the presence of the other is needed to bring out his own value; they are steel and flint, by turns giving and receiving blows, and sending up sparks which dazzle the listener and hold him entranced. ”

“ It so happened that, on the very morning of the day so rife with expectation to the poor mayor, Comte Molé had arrived at Valençay. Nothing could be more propitious, and the worthy official rubbed his hands with glee, at the thought of the immense information he should gain, by listening to the conversation of two such distinguished politicians—of the awful importance of his position with regard to his colleagues at the conseil at home—of the delight and pride of his ambitious wife, while she listened to the detail of all her husband had heard concerning the secret affairs of the nation ”

“ The truth is this—the mind is made the judge of the public character; the heart alone can understand the value of the private one.
“I have often myself seen him smile at the idea of any one attempting his biography, and, whenever by chance he found himself compelled to receive at Valençay any of the petty journalists, the stray collectors of bon mots and epigrams for the salons of Paris, I have beheld him take a malicious pleasure in mystifying their credulity by relations of the most extravagant adventures connected with himself, or with the great public men with whom he had come in contact. ”

“ Indeed, had he not been wise beyond his years, he could not have escaped intimacy with the Prince-Cardinal, Louis de Rohan, he who has become famous in history for his credulity in the affair of the diamond necklace, and who, fool as he was, has yet been by many historians quoted as the origin, the first great cause, of the Revolution. This prelate, who at the time when M. de Talleyrand was a simple abbé, waiting for preferment, was already at the very acmé of dignity and power, spared no pains to conciliate the young ecclesiastic. ”

“ Like all persons of indolent temperament, Louis Seize ever felt a mortal dread of stirring, active people. Infirm of purpose himself, he disliked those who were resolute and steady in the accomplishment of their designs; therefore his aversion to Madame de la Motte would not have been remarkable, had it not been for the very perseverance which it gave him occasion to exercise—perhaps the only instance of tenacity he ever displayed—for he resisted on this occasion the prayers and entreaties of the queen, and the supplications of Madame Elizabeth. ”

“ The artist has represented, in a manner almost sublime, the peculiar mélange of melancholy and finesse which the countenance of the prince always wears when in meditation,—an expression which sometimes inspires me with a feeling of the deepest sadness ”

“ The ready wit, the lively perceptions of young Talleyrand, could not be appreciated in a community where hope was deadened, and imagination dulled, by the certainty that robbed the Future of the dim veil with which it is hidden from the great mass of mankind, and which, according to the morals of the period, rendered the after years of the younger son of the poor noble, or the bastard child of the rich one, as easily to be defined, and as easy to unravel as a record of the past. ”

“ The men of July, whether to curry favour with the new dynasty, or to assume the part of profound politicians, have pretended that they had prepared the fall of Charles X., and they boast that their machinations had aroused the tempest which, in three short days, swallowed up a whole generation of kings. These men have either sought to deceive public opinion, or else have been themselves grossly deceived. Nothing was ever more unlike a conspiracy than the Revolution of 1830 ”