Reminiscences of Prince Talleyrand, Volume 1 (of 2)

by active 19th century M. Colmache

“Well, to return to my tale. At the college, Charles Maurice devoted himself most manfully to study. This is proved by the fact of his having obtained, the second year of his admission, the first prize of his class, although competition must have been hard with boys who had been in the college for many years, while he had been running wild and barefoot on the plains of Perigord. Three years passed away cheerily enough at the college. His life of study had, however, but little variety, for he was during that time one of the unfavoured few who were compelled by the arrangements of their parents to remain at the college during the short vacation. His mother came but seldom to visit him, and never came alone. She was mostly accompanied by an eminent surgeon of Paris, who examined the boy’s leg, and bandaged it and pulled it out to force it to match in length with the other, and burnt and cauterized the offending nerve until the poor fellow learned to dread with extreme terror the summons to the parloir, and the announcement that madame sa mère was awaiting him there. I have often heard him tell of the agony of these visits, and of the disappointment which he experienced on seeing all his playmates depart to their various homes for the holidays, but I never heard him utter a single complaint or condemnation of his mother’s conduct.

“It was at this time that his father died from the consequences of an old wound received in a skirmish some years before, and Charles Maurice was now the Comte de Talleyrand, and head of that branch of the family to which he belonged. Meanwhile, the younger son, Archambaut, had likewise returned from his most refined and tender nursing; but he had had the better chance; his limbs were sound and well developed, as God had made them. No dire accident, the consequence of foul neglect, had marred his shape or tarnished his comeliness. So, one fine day, and as a natural consequence, mark you, of this fortunate circumstance, when Charles Maurice, the eldest son, had finished his course of study at Louis le Grand, having passed through his classes with great éclat, there came a tall, sallow, black-robed priest, and took him away from the midst of friends to the grim old seminaire of St. Sulpice, and it was there that he received the astounding intimation, from the lips of the superior himself, that, by the decision of a conseil de famille, from which there was no appeal, his birthright had been taken from him, and transferred to his younger brother.

“‘Why so?’ faltered the boy, unable to conceal his emotion.

“‘He is not a cripple,’ was the stern and cruel answer.

“It must have been that hour—nay, that very instant—the echo of those heartless words—which made the Prince de Talleyrand what he is even to this very day. Who shall tell the bitter throes of that bold, strong-hearted youth, as he heard the unjust sentence? Was it defiance and despair, the gift of hell, or resignation, the blessed boon of Heaven, which caused him to suffer the coarse, black robe to be thrown at once above his college uniform, without a cry, without a murmur? None will ever be able to divine what his feelings were, for this one incident is always passed over by the prince. He never refers to it, even when in familiar conversation with his most loved intimates. It is certain, therefore, that the single hour of which I speak, bore with it a whole life of bitterness and agony.

“It is evident, as usual with him throughout his whole life, that his decision, however, was taken on the instant. He murmured not—he sued not for commutation of the hateful sentence. He knew that it would be in vain. He even sought at once to conform, outwardly at least, to all the tedium of the endless rules and regulations by which the house was governed; but his whole character was changed—his very nature was warped and blasted. Whatever historians may write, and credulous readers choose to believe, he was not a ‘silent, solitary boy, loving to muse while his comrades played around him,’ as I have seen it written in a recent account of his life. Just the contrary. While at Louis le Grand, he was remarkable for his skill and dexterity at all kinds of games requiring either fleetness of foot or strength of limb; which fact was so extraordinary, from his infirmity, that the tradition has been preserved in the college. He was strong and hardy, in spite of his lameness. This he owed to the fresh air and free exercise he had enjoyed in his early childhood. His temper was mild and tractable, and, when attacked, his only weapon of defence was his tongue. His sharp, quick speech became, indeed, the terror of his comrades. Even then he had learned that the art of governing others consisted merely in self-command. What a pity that some of his juvenile bon mots have not been preserved; they must have been delightful; the very sap and freshness of his mental vigour.

“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. A discontented spirit had gone forth, and even walked abroad into the very nurseries throughout the land. The days were past when the boys of noble blood sat down to table first and were served by the urchin roturiers, their fellow-students. At board, in class, or at play, the sons of the noble and the lowly, of the wealthy and the poor, were now jostled together. The high-born dunce, who was at college merely to while away the useless years between the epoch of actual childhood and that of his admission (still a child) into the army, no longer took precedence of the plebeian boy who was toiling and striving to acquire knowledge, even though it might have been the credit of the former which obtained the admission of the latter into the college.

“In this struggle, the talents and quickness of young Talleyrand had shone conspicuously. His position on his first entrance into the college had been most undefined and false. He had arrived from Perigord wild and untutored, ignorant of the simplest social tradition of the noblesse; therefore had he no place or influence among the nobles; while, without wealth, or any of the dazzling appurtenances of his rank at command, he could scarcely be expected to have sway with the roturiers; and yet, before the first half year had passed away, he was found to be the prime mover and counsel of both factions by the power of his intellect alone. These are facts which still live in the memory of some few of the prince’s old associates, and show how early that grasping mind, which was destined to govern those who governed the world itself, began to assert its dominion and to exercise its powers.

“I have dwelt thus lengthily upon the childhood of the Prince de Talleyrand, because, in the events by which it was marked, you may find both cause and excuse for many things that took place in after years. Such had been his life at Louis le Grand. Now, at the Seminaire, he was thrown at once among a set of creatures of a far different stamp from the bold and independent beings he had left. His new companions were mostly, like himself sons of the poor noblesse; but, unlike himself, they were either the younger or the bastard sons. Not one of these had been deprived, as he had been, of his name and birthright, therefore none could have sympathy with all the bitterness that must have lain so heavy on his heart. Instead of the variety which gave such interest to his college life, and such constant food to his perceptive powers, he was surrounded in his new abode by beings all actuated by one single motive, and who had therefore been moulded by the same views into the same character. The sleepy dream of life at St. Sulpice centred wholly in ecclesiastical distinction and honour, and merely resolved itself into either riches or dignities, according to the temper of the dreamer. 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. So must have thought that little congregation of the Seminaire of Saint Sulpice, who were gathered there in 1770, the year of the admission of Charles Maurice. But God had ordained it otherwise; and, could some few of the fortunes of those lads be told at this day, we should perhaps find as great diversity of adventure, and many a tale of interest as wild and fearful, as those which could be furnished by the youthful denizens of the Royal College of Louis le Grand at the same period.

“However, it does not appear that the young candidate for church preferment was guilty, for a single moment, of deception, with regard to those who had thus fashioned out his destiny. He wore no mask of hypocrisy at that time certainly, made no false pretence of fasting or of penance; but openly and freely shared in all the amusements which were within his reach, perhaps buoyed up with the presentiment that the time was drawing nigh when the cowled monk and the stoled priest would be bound by no obligation to keep the vow which had been breathed from terror or necessity.