Such was the course of affairs growing out of the first invasion of rights to property at the suggestion of the Bishop of Autun. But the immediate effects upon his fortunes are curious. He was erroneously associated in the foreign mind with the revolutionary acts that followed; and when, on the contrary, for self-preservation, he fled to London to escape the stigma of those very acts and the malice of the very men who perpetrated them, he was ordered out of England as a Jacobin or regicide and found a refuge in America. But in our republic no countenance was given to him, no cordial greeting extended. By the Federalists, he was, contemned as a traitor to his king, an apostate to his religion, an enemy to social order. By the anti-Federalists he was viewed as an aristocrat, an _émigré_, an obstacle to social progress. The ex-bishop, therefore, in 1794, like the expatriated M. Blot in 1864, had leisure to turn his attention to the culinary art. Talleyrand, and the other involuntary emigrants, observed upon the vines near the kitchens a beautiful round red production growing, which was cultivated as a vegetable ornament, whose botanical name was the _lycopersicum_, but which Americans called the love-apple. The French gentlemen recognized in it their _tomate_, and forthwith taught our great-grandmothers how to render it a more palatable esculent for their tables than it was a pleasing embellishment to their gardens.
But the Reign of Terror soon terminated; like the reign of Louis, it ended also at the guillotine. He now returned to Paris. His friend Barras was in the Directory, and Barras was of the aristocracy, who, however, "had been forgiven the crime of being a noble, in consideration of the virtue of being a regicide." From that date began the new lease to Talleyrand of power, _prestige_, influence, and prosperity, which was never again broken during his long life. He was willing to serve any administration under any form of government, providing it was the best under the circumstances, and when he could be, as he for the first time expressed it, the right man in the right place. But never for a day did he remain when he could not be useful to France, nor serviceable to the executive by whom he was retained. He knew how long it was beneficial to adhere to the Directory, and when the time had come to drop off. { 100} The first consul was treated in the same manner, and the emperor, and the allies, and Louis XVIII., and Louis Philippe. None of them could fascinate him by their condescension or consideration; yet he served them all honorably, honestly; but it was requisite he should be called and retained on his own terms. When he was dismissed, it was not before he already knew it was better for his own interests to go.