With that disregard for mere truthfulness in small matters which we notice throughout the memoirs (when there is a motive), he tells us that he kept aloof from politics, and only yielded after some refusals to the solicitations of Mme. de Staël. We know perfectly well that he was at the end of his purse, and was, if for no other reason, compelled to seek public service. He wrote to Mme. de Staël that he had only the means of subsistence for another month, and he would “blow his brains out if she did not find him a place.” He had then been in Paris more than six months, and saw no opening. Michaud says that he had left what little money remained to him (50,000 francs) in a bank at Hamburg. Castellane tells a curious story of his having left his silver in charge of a number of market-women when he left France, and says that he collected every bit of it when he returned in 1796. But he had now an establishment to keep up. The diplomatist had been smitten at last by an unexpected type of woman. When Madame Grand first met him, or first lived with him, it is quite impossible to determine. The more plausible authorities are contradictory, and the lady’s career has been as thickly encrusted with romance as that of Talleyrand. Her nationality is doubtful. Her father is generally believed to have been an Englishman, though some speak of him as a Dutch sailor, and others as a Breton. She was born in India, and her mother is said to have been a native. She was married, when young, to a Swiss, M. Grand, but he had divorced her when she had captivated no less a person than Sir Philip Francis. When Sir Philip returned to England, she came to Paris, and for some years we trace her indistinctly flitting between Paris, London and Hamburg. It may have been at Hamburg, but her German biographer thinks it was more probably at Paris, in 1797, that she met and captured Talleyrand.
Three points about her are clearly established. She was very beautiful—“the beauty of two centuries,” one enthusiast says—not at all cultured, and very far from puritanical. Her lithe, graceful figure, pure white forehead, wide-opened, tender blue eyes, with long, dark lashes, and especially her long, soft, golden-brown hair —“the most wonderful hair in Europe”—are described by contemporaries with some warmth. The obvious strain of Indian blood in her complexion and bearing increased the charm, and her intellectual deficiency was not accentuated by any attempt to conceal it. She seems to have been devoted to her distinguished protector, and although she later admitted a Spanish prince to a share in her affection, she always spoke of him with great admiration. Talleyrand must have loved her in return. It is true that he only married her under compulsion from Napoleon, but most of his biographers quite wrongly suppose that he was, from the ecclesiastical point of view, ever free to marry. They lived together, affectionately and faithfully, as far as one can tell, until—twelve years later—the Princess Talleyrand was infatuated by the Prince of Spain. Talleyrand explains his choice of a woman without culture on the ground that “a woman of intelligence often compromises her husband; without it, she can only compromise herself.” The truth seems to be that there was no calculation whatever in the match. The plain phrase, he fell in love with her, accurately describes what happened. A man of exceptional mental power often finds the ablest of his female contemporaries, with their strain and effort to reach his level, impossible companions; moreover, Talleyrand was a deeply amorous and uxorious man. When friends had pointed out to him that his actress-friend at Saint Sulpice was without mental gifts, he said he had not noticed it. Mme. de Flahaut—for whom, however, one can only admit a qualified attachment—had kept almost the only non-political house in Paris before the Revolution.
From an engraving, after a picture by F. Gérard.
MADAME TALLEYRAND.
It was now more needful than ever to secure an appointment.[27] Mme. de Staël lent Talleyrand 24,000 francs, and promised to use her influence on the Directorate. Lytton connects Talleyrand’s appointment with the reading of his papers at the Institut. Two of the Directors, Rewbell and Reveillère belonged to it, and possibly heard his second paper on July 13th. These were the most decent members of the group of five which then ruled France, and it is natural that they should appreciate Talleyrand’s worth to the country. But Mme. de Staël won over the most important of the five, Barras, and induced him to invite Talleyrand to dine at his house at Suresnes. The other four lived with their families in a modest and respectable fashion under the eyes of the people at the Luxembourg. Barras, an aristocrat by birth, but coarse, violent, and sensual, made a good deal of money by secret commissions, and kept a lively establishment at Suresnes, besides the apartments at the Luxembourg where Mme. Tallien presided. An accident afforded a good opportunity to Talleyrand. Whilst he waited at Barras’ house the latter’s aide-de-camp, a youth to whom he was greatly attached, was drowned in the river, and it fell to Talleyrand to console the very distressed Director. He made a useful impression on Barras; in fact that functionary some time later paid him the awkward compliment of saying that his ways “would sweeten a dung-hill.” There was a change in the Ministry soon afterwards, and Barras warmly presented Talleyrand for foreign affairs. Rewbell and Reveillère supported him. Carnot opposed everything that Barras proposed, and Barthélemy followed Carnot. But the three carried the nomination. That night at ten o’clock Talleyrand was called out of the Salon des Étrangers by a gens-d’arme. He brought an official notification signed by Carnot. Talleyrand foolishly wastes a paragraph or two in explaining several reasons why he felt bound to accept. One would like him better it he had devoted them to a grateful acknowledgment of the help given him by Mme. de Staël. But she seems to have bored him a good deal, and in any case they had separated before these pages were written. “She has only one defect,” he once said: “She is insufferable.”
Thus did Talleyrand enter upon the second stage of his diplomatic career. From his professional point of view the situation was superb. France was still at war with the world, but the success of Napoleon was gradually bringing matters to the point where diplomacy begins. There was the prospect of a long series of treaties. Talleyrand was, as ever, ardently desirous of peace; he wrote to Madame de Staël with that assurance.[28] Unfortunately, his chiefs were very meddlesome, very quarrelsome, and not very competent. They “had been chosen in anger, and had not transcendent ability,” says Mme. de Staël. Barras, a violent ex-soldier, with a good judgment and some penetration, was a Dantonist, and of loose and luxurious life. Carnot, the second strong man, detested Barras on both counts. He was a Robespierrean, a man of strict conduct, shrewd but narrow. Rewbell, a moderate, a lawyer of ability and integrity, but rather gruff, detested both Carnot and Barras and their traditions. Reveillère, honest and peaceful, tried to mediate. Barthélemy, ex-abbé, supported Carnot. Their deliberations were lively. At the first meeting of the Directorate that Talleyrand attended Carnot, raising his hand, swore that some accusation of Barras’ was untrue. “Don’t raise your hand,” shouted Barras; “it would drip with blood.” “These are the men,” says Talleyrand, “with whom I was to work to reintroduce France into European society.” He would not even see the good points of his colleagues of the Institut. Reveillère was a supporter of the new “Theophilanthropists”—“a gang of thieves,” says Talleyrand, with bitter levity. The Theophilanthropists correspond to what are now called “Ethical Societies.” They hired halls, in which they had moral discourses and lectures on philosophy, with singing of undogmatic hymns.
With the very few churches left active in Paris, they formed the only sobering influence. But Talleyrand had, by the time he wrote his memoirs, lost all admiration of the philosophic morality he had so much appreciated in his speech on education.
Moreover, the Directors left their Ministers no initiative. Talleyrand says he had little to do except sign documents drawn up by them and give passports. On one occasion Rewbell compelled him to re-write the instructions he was sending to envoys. The romantic biographers describe another occasion when, they say, Barras threw an ink-pot at him. Representatives abroad complained that France had no policy. The Directors were too slavishly influenced by their emissaries, and each of them had his own plan. There was, too, the eternal scarcity of money. At the Department the salaries of most of the officials were in arrears. At his official residence he would have us believe that the servants were dining off Sèvres dishes because they could not afford to buy earthenware.