On my return to France my first care was to attend the sessions of the Institute, and thus to show the members of that time, many of whom we have every reason to regret, what pleasure I felt at finding myself one of their number. During the first session at which I was present the committee was reappointed, and I received the honourable post of secretary. The six months' report which I drew up, with all the care that I could bring to it, was perhaps of a too deferential character, as I was giving an account of work to which I was a complete stranger. It was work which doubtless had cost much research and much labour to one of our most learned colleagues, and was entitled, "Dissertations upon the Riparian Laws." At the same time in our public meetings I delivered some lectures which I was then allowed to insert in the Memoirs of the Institute. Forty years have elapsed since that date, during which this chair has been forbidden to me, first by long absences, and also by duties to which I was obliged to devote the whole of my time, and I may add by the discretion which times of difficulty make incumbent upon a man whose business is political; and, finally, by the infirmities which old age usually brings or aggravates.
But to-day I feel it necessary—and, indeed, regard it as a duty—to appear for the last time in memory of a man known throughout Europe, a man who was my friend, and who was our colleague since the formation of the Institute. I come forward publicly to testify to our esteem for his person and to our regret for his loss. His position and mine enable me to reveal several of his special merits. His principal, but not his sole title to glory consists in a correspondence extending over forty years, necessarily unknown to the public, who will probably never hear of it. I asked myself, "Who will speak upon that matter within these walls? Who will have any reason to speak of it except myself, who have known so much of it, who have been so pleased by it, and so often helped by it in the course of the Ministerial duties which I have had to perform under three very different reigns?"
Count Reinhart was thirty years of age and I was thirty-seven when I first met him. He entered public life with a large stock of information; he knew five or six languages, and was familiar with their literatures. He could have attained celebrity as a poet or historian or geographer, and in this latter capacity he became a member of the Institute at the time of its foundation.
At that time he was already a member of the Academy of Science in Göttingen. Born and educated in Germany, he had published in his youth certain poems which had attracted the attention of Gessner, Wieland and Schiller. At a later date, when his health forced him to take the waters of Carlsbad, he was fortunate enough to meet and to know the famous Goethe, who so far appreciated his taste and his knowledge as to apply to him for information upon any outstanding features in French literature. Herr Reinhart promised to keep him informed. Undertakings of this nature among men of first-rate intellectual power are invariably mutual, and soon become bonds of friendship. The intimacy between Count Reinhart and Goethe gave rise to a correspondence which is now being printed in Germany.
Having thus reached that time of life when a man must definitely choose that career for which he thinks himself best fitted, we shall see that Herr Reinhart formed a resolution by no means consistent with his character, his tastes, his own position, and that of his family: remarkable as the fact was for that age, in preference to the many careers in which he could have been independent, he chose one in which independence was impossible, and gave his preference to diplomacy. His choice was a good one; he was fitted to occupy any post in this profession, and filled all posts in succession and all with distinction.
I will venture to assert that his early studies had fitted him admirably for his profession. His work in theology especially had brought him distinction in the seminary of Denkendorf and in the Protestant faculty of Tübingen; it had given him a strength and dexterity in argument which may be noted in every document from his pen. Lest I should seem to be pursuing a paradoxical idea, I may recall the fact that several of our great diplomatists were theologians, and have all made their mark in history by their conduct of the most important political affairs of their age. Cardinal Chancellor Duprat was as completely versed in canon law as jurisprudence, and fixed, in conjunction with Leo X., the principles of the Concordat which in large part survives to-day; Cardinal d'Ossat, notwithstanding the opposition of several great Powers, succeeded in reconciling Henry IV. with the Court of Rome; his surviving correspondence is still recommended for study to those of our young men who propose to follow a political career; Cardinal de Polignac, a theologian, poet, and diplomatist, after many unhappy wars, was able to preserve the conquests of Louis XIV. to France by the treaty of Utrecht.
Thus, too, amid theological books collected by his father, afterwards Bishop of Gap, was begun the education of M. de Lionne, to whose name fresh lustre has recently been added by an important publication.
The names which I have quoted will suffice to justify my idea of the influence which I conceive to have been exerted upon Count Reinhart's mind by the early studies to which his father's education had directed him.
The varied and profound information which he had acquired qualified him to perform at Bordeaux the honourable, if modest, duties of tutor in a Protestant family in that town. There he naturally began relations with several men whose talents, whose mistakes, and whose death brought such renown to our first Legislative Assembly. Count Reinhart was easily induced by them to enter the service of France.
I feel in no way obliged to follow in detail the many vicissitudes of his long career. The numerous posts which were entrusted to him, sometimes of importance, at other times of inferior rank, seem to have followed in no consecutive order, and, indeed, to denote a want of gradation which we could hardly understand at the present time; but in that age neither positions nor persons were subject to prejudice. In other times favour, and more rarely discrimination, called men to eminent positions, but during the time of which I speak, for good or for evil, positions were won by force, and such a system naturally produced confusion.