“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.”
“You flatter me,” said C., smiling; “the undertaking would be far beyond my power, or, indeed, it would be within the limit of the capabilities but of one man alone. 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? Such a biography of himself as he could write, would be a literary monument as lasting as the world itself. It would be the secret history of every government of Europe for the last sixty years—the private memoirs of every distinguished individual would have to be incorporated into such a biography, where, of necessity, every distinguished individual in Europe must be made to play a part. I know that M. de Talleyrand has been for years past compiling his diplomatic memoirs, but, by a singular infatuation, he has proclaimed his intention of not permitting their publication to the world until forty years after his death. This determination, à la Voltaire, is singularly in accordance with the character of the man, who is always repeating so playfully, ‘No one can doubt my powers of waiting.’
“Some of those most interested in the matter, to whom he has communicated his malicious decision, rail loudly against such a determination; whilst others, with perhaps equally good reason, as loudly applaud; so that it is evident to the unconcerned looker-on, that whatever may be his secret motive for thus deciding, it is already justified by the different passions which it has excited. He has in this, as in everything else, displayed the depth of his reflective powers, and refused to sacrifice high interests and grave results to a paltry feeling of amour propre. He has reflected that, in those intervening years, all the loud baying pack of fierce detractors of his fame will have yelped forth their calumnies—the smaller fry will also have all expended their puny efforts, and then he will come and call upon posterity to judge between him and them. Doubt it not—posterity will answer the appeal. The next generation will be more just than his own. The fierce passions, the deadly struggles, the political hatreds, amid which his own existence has been passed, will all have died away, and men will sit in calm, unbiassed judgment on the various actions of his life, and will be the better able to pronounce their verdict when they have beheld the consequences of his counsels; when they shall have been enabled to compare his adoration of his country, his indifference to its rulers, with the slavish self-interest, the narrow-minded, mercenary views of those with whom he had so often to contend.
“Believe me, a man must entertain a tolerably good opinion of his own discrimination, and have the organ of self-esteem developed in no mean degree, who could sit down coolly with a pretension of giving to the world a correct, nay, even a lucid life of Prince Talleyrand. He has out-lived the greater portion of the comrades of his youth, of whom even then he lived so far in advance, that it was said of him, he had ‘comrades and colleagues, but no contemporaries.’ Long before middle age, he had learned that, in public life, the one thing needful is discretion; while he it was who first published to mankind the discovery he had made, that ‘speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts.’ Therefore, it is not probable that there exists a soul who could ever have penetrated sufficiently into the wily statesman’s confidence ever to gain enough knowledge of his aims and views, to account for the different changes in his principles, with which he has been so taunted by all parties. There is not a single epoch of his life which is not, besides, so bound up with anecdotes and incidents of the ‘times in which he lived,’ that often the most simple recital of facts, as connected with any adventure in which he may have been engaged, might give deep offence in other quarters, and cause recrimination, and perhaps even, in some cases, litigation, on the part of other high personages, whose names would have to be brought forward.
“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! Notwithstanding the greediness with which the public have always sucked in any stray anecdote, any fugitive bon mot, or axiom of this great man’s, yet how strangely ignorant do they still remain of his real character—how blind to the real grandeur of soul, which he ever displayed amid the most trying circumstances—where any other than he would have clutched at the shadow, he let both the empty substance and the emptier shadow pass, while he calmly paused for that which was to follow. 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. One of his keenest enjoyments consists in making me read, while he is at his toilet, these same anecdotes as they appear in the peculiar journal for which the poor gobe-mouche has been catering. As I have said before, there is so much that is real, and so much that is false, mixed up with everything connected with the prince, that the historian who would seek to be veracious, finds himself completely baffled. On the other hand, the world of anecdote is our own. He is no niggard, in sooth, of his rich store of souvenirs, and loves to dispense them to his intimates with a bounteous hand. The mention of an obscure name, the raising of the simplest doubt, will draw forth, when he is in the vein, such ample fund of amusement, that many a thick, closely-printed volume might have been compiled from this source alone.
“I remember that, one evening, by some unaccountable circumstance which I now forget, we were fated to spend the hours from dinner till bedtime alone. The ladies of the family had gone to do honour to the bridal of a rich vassal in the neighbourhood of the château, and had most especially recommended the prince to retire early, as he was labouring under severe cold on the chest. You will scarcely believe me when I tell you that we remained up together until daylight—so absorbed was he in the remembrance of events of years gone by, and of which some simple observation on my part had touched, as it were, the galvanic train, and roused the reminiscences which had slumbered perhaps since his youth, while I thought not of rest or sleep so long as he talked on. I could have listened until doomsday. One of the subjects on which he spoke that evening was the very one upon which I have just been entertaining you; that of his memoirs. There had been an advertisement in one of the Paris papers that morning announcing sketches of ‘the Arch-Diplomatist, from Original Documents.’
“‘This is about the fortieth attempt of the kind within the last dozen years,’ said he, in answer to my information of the circumstance, ‘and, what is more astonishing is the fact, as I am told, of their having all met with more or less success. The public love to be duped, and seek with eagerness every occasion to be deceived. It is the charlatans alone whose numbers fail, dupes are never wanting.’
“Had I not been already convinced of the utter impossibility which must ever exist of any individual of our day being able to do justice to the ‘Life of Prince Talleyrand,’ that evening’s conversation, in the old Perrault-looking drawing-room of Valençay, would have amply proved it. A volume might be filled with the anecdotes he told me merely relating to the first years of his youth—just at his début in the fashionable world, before the revolution. He began with the Séminaire, recounting with peculiar delight the history of his intimate associates there—his prodigious memory seeming to grasp the most trifling details relating to each with as much vigour and freshness as though he were speaking of yesterday. Many were the curious customs, the picturesque observances, of the old place, the very tradition of which has since been lost, obliterated, and trodden under foot in the mire of the revolution, and of which he alone, in the whole world, was left the chronicler.
“‘It cannot be denied,’ said he, in speaking of this establishment, ‘that vice and infidelity had crept in there as elsewhere, as how could it be otherwise, when all the talent and brilliancy which have dazzled youth in all ages were on the side of doubt and irreligion? And yet there were still some bright examples, some few specimens of a higher order of beings, gathered among us, whose light shone out yet brighter from amid the utter darkness by which they were surrounded. The histories of some of those young men would better serve as themes for novel or romance than for book of saintly lore; for the revolution dispersed them right and left, and sent them forth to the world, some to battle with their fierce, pent-up passions, others to struggle with their timid fears.