Both personages were perfect actors in their way, and each with a pretension to superiority, was determined not to be subalternised by the other. Louis had acted the part of king for some years with the more care and punctiliousness because he was only king in name. Talleyrand had been accustomed from his youth to the highest positions in society; in later years he had been admitted into the intimacy of sovereigns, and been treated by them, if not on a footing of equality, with the highest respect; and he had just disposed of the fortunes of France. The descendant of kings meant to impose the sovereign on his powerful subject at once, with the airs of royalty, for which he was famous. The bishop, noble, and diplomatist was prepared to encounter these airs with the respectful well-bred nonchalance of a man of the world, who knew his own value; and the natural but not obsequious deference of a great minister to a constitutional monarch. It is probable that neither said what he intended to say, or what contemporaries have said for them; but it is reported that Louis gave M. de Talleyrand to understand that, in remaining tranquil and contented until Providence had placed the crown on his head, he had played the proper part of the prince and the philosopher, acting with far more dignity and wisdom than the bustling men of action who had been occupied during this time with their own advancement.
On the other hand, when his Majesty, wishing perhaps to efface the impression of observations that were not altogether complimentary, spoke in admiration of M. de Talleyrand’s abilities, and asked him how he had contrived, first to overturn the Directory, and finally Bonaparte, M. de Talleyrand has the credit of having replied with a sort of naïveté which, when it suited him, he could well assume:
“Really, sire, I have done nothing for this: there is something inexplicable about me which brings ill luck on the governments that neglect me.”[65]
Finally, as to essentials, the King appears, without entering much into details, to have given M. de Talleyrand to understand that France would have a constitution, and M. de Talleyrand the administration of foreign affairs.
This was all that M. de Talleyrand now expected.
Nevertheless he tried, on a subsequent occasion, to persuade the legitimate monarch that his throne would acquire increased solidity by being accepted as the spontaneous gift of the nation.
A really great man in Louis’s place would probably have provoked a vote by universal suffrage; the mere fact of appealing to such a vote would have attained a universal assent, springing from a universal enthusiasm; and, in fact, such a vote for a king who had legitimacy in his favour would at the same time have renewed the vigour of the legitimist principle.
A very prudent man would not have run this risk; he would have made the most of the vote of the Senate, since it was given, and taken for granted that it was a vote in favour of his race as well as of himself.
A vain and proud man, however, could not so easily divest himself of a peculiar quality which only he possessed. Any man might be chosen king of the French, but Louis XVIII. alone could be the legitimate King of France. This hereditary right to the throne was a personal property. He had claimed it in exile: he was resolved to assert it in power, and when M. de Talleyrand was for continuing the argument, he cut him short, according to contemporaneous authorities, by observing with a courteous but somewhat cynical smile: