M. de Blacas was one of those gentlemen of the second order of nobility, who often produce on the vulgar a stronger effect as a grand seigneur than nobles of the first class, because they add a little acting to the natural dignity usually attendant upon persons who have been treated from their infancy with distinction. He was middle-aged, good-looking, courteous, a good scholar, a great collector of medals, very vain of his court favour, which was based on his long knowledge of all the moral and physical weaknesses of his master, and with an entire confidence in the indestructibility of an edifice which he had seen, notwithstanding, raised on the ruins of its own foundation.
He had, also, such a confidence in his own capacity that he conceived it impossible for any one but an egregious fool, or a malignant personal enemy, to doubt it.
He concentrated in his hands the King’s resolutions on all affairs, except foreign affairs, which M. de Talleyrand managed directly with his Majesty.
A government was thus formed, and the first duty of that government was to make a treaty of peace with the victorious powers. M. de Talleyrand had, necessarily, the conduct of this negotiation. There were two questions at issue: the one, the arrangements between the European potentates who had to give possessors to the territories they had taken from France; and the other, the arrangements to be made between France and these potentates.
Some persons thought it would be possible to deal with the two questions together, and that France could be admitted into a congress where the special questions of France with Europe, and the questions that had to be decided by the European sovereigns between themselves, could be settled simultaneously.[67]
But a little consideration will, I think, show that the questions between France and Europe, and the questions between the different States of Europe, which had been in hostility with France, were perfectly distinct.
It would also have been absurd, and consequently impossible, for France to have exacted, that all the matters that had to be arranged as resulting from the late war with France, should be treated in France.
The capital of France was the proper place for treating as to French interests.
The capital of one of the allies was the place where the affairs between the allies were naturally to be discussed. Paris was chosen in the first case, Vienna in the second.