Old engravings of the "Abbé de Périgord" represent a very pretty man; as he grew old,çoisRené M. de Talleyrand's face had turned into a death's head: his eyes were dull, so that one had a difficulty in reading them, which served his purpose. As he had received a great deal of contempt, he had soaked himself in it and placed it in the two hanging corners of his mouth.
A great manner, which came from his birth, a strict observance of the niceties, a cold and disdainful air contributed to keep up the illusion that surrounded the Prince de Bénévent. His manners exercised an empire over second-rate people and the men of the new society, to whom the society of the old days was unknown. Formerly one met persons at every turn whose ways resembled M. de Talleyrand's, and one took no notice of them; but, almost alone in the field in the midst of democratic customs, he appeared a phenomenon: in order to submit to the yoke of his forms, it suited self-love to ascribe to the minister's wit the ascendant exercised by his breeding.
When, occupying a considerable place, you find yourself mixed up with prodigious revolutions, these give you a chance importance which the common herd take for your personal merit: lost in Bonaparte's rays, M. de Talleyrand shone, under the Restoration, with the brightness borrowed from a fortune that was not his. The accidental position of the Prince de Bénévent permitted him to attribute to himself the power of overthrowing Napoleon and the honour of restoring Louis XVIII.: have I myself, like all those gapers, not been foolish enough to fall into that fable? When I was better informed, I came to know that M. de Talleyrand was not a political Warwick: his arm lacked the strength that lays low and raises thrones.
"We agree, he was a very immoral man; but what ability!"
Alas, no! That hope must be lost too, so consoling for his enthusiasts, so desirable in the interests of the prince's memory: the hope of making M. de Talleyrand a demon. Beyond certain ordinary negociations, at the bottom of which he had the cleverness to place his personal interest in the first rank, there was nothing to be expected of M. de Talleyrand.
M. de Talleyrand kept up a few habits and a few maxims for the use of the sycophants and worthless fellows of his intimate circle. His toilet in public, copied after that of a minister in Vienna, was a triumph of diplomacy. He boasted of never being in a hurry; he boasted that time is our enemy and that we must kill it: by this he reckoned to be occupied for only a few moments.