It is impossible not to think with terror of the future of this great country, which was still so brilliant and so proud four years ago when I came to it, and whose glory is now so tarnished when I am leaving it perhaps for ever.
I do not admit the possibility of M. de Talleyrand's coming back. There are too many good reasons why he should not. I set them forth in a letter which I have written to him and which describes his position pretty correctly, so I insert it here.
"I have a serious duty towards you of which I am never more conscious than when your glory is at stake. When I speak to you you sometimes find me a little irritating, and then I am silent and do not tell you all that I think—the whole truth. Allow me therefore to write to you, and please forgive anything that may seem displeasing because of the devotion which inspires what I write. Without claiming a very great share of cleverness I don't think I am altogether at fault in forming an opinion about you whom I know so well, and whose difficulties and embarrassments I am in such a good position for observing. It is not therefore lightly that I press you to abandon public life and to retire from the scene where a disordered society is playing a sorry part. Do not remain any longer at a post in which you will necessarily be called upon to demolish the edifice which you have laboured so hard to sustain. You know what I feared last year, and how greatly, when you made up your mind to return to England. I foresaw all the repugnance which you would find in performing your task with the instruments at your disposal. Confess that my forebodings have to a great extent been realised. This year there are a thousand additional aggravating circumstances. Think of the circumstances in which you would find yourself. What do we see in England? A society divided by party spirit, and agitated by all the passions which arise from that spirit, losing every day something of its brilliancy, its breeding and its security, a King without firmness influenced chiefly by the very man of all his Cabinet who has most injured you, a frivolous, presumptuous, arrogant Minister, who pays you none of the respect due to your age and position. He obstructs and impedes business by every means in his power. His one thought is to secure the triumph of his own ideas; he has no thought of educating himself by studying yours. He leads you on from uncertainty to uncertainty, entraps you with contradictions, leaves you in ignorance and doubt, carries on independently of you things in which you ought to have a share, and then glories in the success of his treachery and scorn. Do you think you can preserve much longer with such a man, the dignity which befits you? Do you not feel that it is already compromised, in fact, and soon will be in the public eye? Moreover, do you think that an Ambassador who is a great personage, a man of your social gifts, can be acceptable to a Government which is being swept away by the current of Revolution, especially when you have already enough to do to struggle against a similar movement in your own country? You have founded an alliance on a common basis of good order, stable equilibrium, and conservation of existing institutions. Will it please you to continue it on the basis of common sympathy with anarchy?
"Do not forget that the support and consolation which you have found for several years in your relations with your colleagues will no longer be there, now that the face of the Diplomatic Corps in London has changed so much. The new Spain, the new Portugal, the shapeless form of Belgium, are the only conspicuous features, as impudent as they are vulgar. You would therefore be isolated in England and in the trying situation which would be the result, where would you find support? Not in the Government you represent, for pettiness, indiscretion, vanity, and intrigue dominate everything in Paris. Only the greatness of your position in London enabled you to hold them in check. Our little Ministers are more on Lord Granville's side than ours, and you would not have their support in dominating things here. You came here four years ago, not to make your fortune, your career or your reputation. All these were made long ago; you came, not out of affection for those who are conducting our government, for whom you have neither love nor affection. You came solely to render a great service to your country at a moment of the gravest peril. It was a perilous enterprise at your age! It was a bold thing to reappear to still the storm after fifteen years of retirement! You accomplished what you attempted; let that suffice you. Henceforth you can do nothing but diminish the importance of what you have done. Remember the truth of Lord Grey's words: 'When one has kept one's health, and one's faculties, one may still at an advanced age usefully occupy one's self with public affairs. But, in critical times like the present, a degree of attention, activity and energy is required which belongs only to the prime of life and not to its decline.' When one is young, one moment is as good as another for joining in the fray; when one is old the only thing to do is to choose a good time for leaving it. Here Lord Grey was the last, all too feeble barrier against the revolutionary spirit; here you have been the last barrier against the struggle of the powers with each other. Lord Grey realised too late that he was being carried away by the torrent; do you not also feel that your influence has become as inadequate as his? The noble and touching farewell words of Lord Grey threw a last fleeting ray of light on his career; his retirement became a triumph; another day and he was effaced! The last two champions of the old Europe should quit public life at the same time. May they carry with them into their retirement the consciousness of their efforts and their services, and may history one day show that the coincidence of their departures was honourable to both.
"This and only this I conceive to be the fitting close of your public life. All considerations which might lead you to think otherwise are unworthy of you. You cannot be influenced by the possibility of a little more amusement, a few more social resources. Are you to count the trifling excitements of dispatches, couriers, and news? The interest produced by such things is too often a child's plaything. Are we even to consider the more or less material tranquillity we enjoy? Is the epoch of shocks and revolutionary torments at an end in France? I do not know. Is it more or less distant in England? I cannot tell. Will solitude be trying? Shall we seek distraction in travel? What in a word will be the arrangement of our private life? What does it matter? I am younger than you, and might, perhaps, more naturally take some thought for that; but I should think myself unworthy of your confidence and of the truth which I am now venturing to tell you if the slightest consideration of my own comfort made me keep anything from you. When one is a historical personage as you are, one has no right to think of any other future than the future of history. History, as you know, judges the end of a man's life more severely than the beginning. If, as I am proud to believe, you think as highly of my judgment as of my affection, you will be as frank with yourself as I am with you now. You will have done with all self-created illusions, all specious arguments and subtle pieces of self-love, and you will put an end to a situation which would soon lower you in other eyes than mine. Do not bargain with the public. Dictate its judgment, do not submit to it. Confess that you are old in order that people may not say that you are aging. Say nobly and simply before all the world, 'The time has come!'"
Dom Miguel has left Genoa and has been seen at Savona. This is particularly displeasing to Lord Palmerston.
London, August 19, 1834.—It appears that while Dom Miguel was at Savona several vessels were seen in the offing which hoisted English colours and made many signals, following which Dom Miguel is said to have returned to Genoa. This is what was being said yesterday, but no explanation is forthcoming.
London, August 20, 1834.—M. de Talleyrand left London yesterday, probably never to return. That, at least, is what he said himself.
There is always something solemn and peculiarly painful in doing a thing for the last time, in departure, in absence, in saying good-bye, especially when one is eighty. I think he felt it, I know I feel it for him. Besides, surrounded as I am with illness, and ill myself, this being the anniversary of my mother's death, remembering all the pleasant things that have happened to me in England, I feel very weak and discouraged by the thought of departure. I said good-bye to M. de Talleyrand with a heart-sinking as great as if I was not to see him again in four days, and I might well have said to him as I said to Madame de Lieven, "I mourn my departure in yours."
M. de Talleyrand's last impressions of his public life here were not precisely agreeable. After many hours spent at the Foreign Office in the company of M. de Miraflorès, of M. de Sarmento, and of Lord Palmerston, who, as usual, kept everybody waiting a long time, the additional articles (which are of no great importance) of the Treaty of April 22, the Quadruple Alliance, were signed in the middle of the night. Lord Palmerston wanted to extend the scope of the Treaty. M. de Talleyrand, on the other hand, desired rather to narrow its obligations. Lord Granville's absence from Paris had left the French Government free from this source of obsession, so they held their ground and authorised M. de Talleyrand to maintain his position, and Lord Palmerston gained nothing by his wilfulness, Lord Holland by his draughtsmanship, or Miraflorès by his antics.