There are çoisRenétwo ways to become a minister: one abruptly and by force, the other by length of time and by dexterity; the first was not for M. de Villèle's use: craftiness excludes energy, but is safer and less liable to lose the ground which it has gained. The essential point in this manner of arriving is to accept many blows and to be able to swallow a quantity of bitter pills: M. de Talleyrand made great use of this dietary of second-rate ambitions. Men generally rise to office through their mediocrity and remain there through their superiority. This conjunction of antagonistic elements is the rarest thing, and it is for that reason that there are so few statesmen.
M. de Villèle had precisely the commonplace qualities that cleared the ground for him: he allowed noise to be made around him, in order to gather the fruits of the alarm that caught hold of the Court. Sometimes he would deliver warlike speeches, in which, however, a few phrases allowed a glimmer of hope to pass of the existence of an approachable nature. I thought that a man of his stamp ought to commence by entering public life, no matter how, and in a not too alarming position. It seemed to me that what he needed was first to be a minister without portfolio, in order one day to obtain the premiership itself. That would give him a reputation for moderation, he would be dressed exactly to suit him; it would become evident that the parliamentary leader of the Opposition was not an ambitious man, since he consented to make himself so small in the interests of peace. Any man who has once been a minister, no matter by what right, becomes one again: a first ministry is the stepping-stone to the second; the individual who has worn the embroidered coat retains a smell of portfolio by which the offices find him again sooner or later.
Madame de Montcalm had told me, from her brother, that there was no longer any ministry vacant, but that, if my two friends were willing to enter the Council as ministers of State without portfolio, the King would be charmed, promising something better later. She added that, if I consented to go so far, I should be sent to Berlin. I answered that that made no difference; that, for myself, I was always ready to leave and that I would go to the devil, in the event of the kings having any mission to their cousin to fulfil; but that I would not, however, accept exile, unless M. de Villèle accepted his entrance into the Council. I should also have liked to place M. Lainé with my two friends. I took the treble negociation upon myself. I had become the master of political France through my own powers. Few people doubt that it was I who made M. de Villèle's first ministry and who drove the Mayor of Toulouse into the arena.