[3] I have already ignored scores of stories about Talleyrand’s youth. The biographer has to plunge beneath a mass of them to reach his true subject. A discharged secretary of his, who could imitate his signature, flooded Paris and London with fabricated letters and anecdotes, and he had many rivals in the business. Writers like Bastide, Pichot, Villemarest, Michaud, Stewartson, Touchard-Lafosse, and even Sainte-Beuve, readily admit these, and some of the best biographies contain a few that are inconsistent with known facts. Such are the stories of his chalking Voltairean verses on his uncle’s garden wall, and of (in the following year) scaling the walls of Saint Sulpice by night, seducing a whole family, and being imprisoned in the Bastille. The dates or other features betray these apocryphal legends.
[4] Lady Blennerhassett and most biographers wrongly describe him as a priest. He was not ordained until four years later. The archives of the Sorbonne, in registering his application in April and June, 1775, speak of him as a sub-deacon.
[5] On the strength of this absurd story historians like Professor Sloane inform their readers that Talleyrand “was a friend of the infamous Mme. du Barry, and owed his promotion to her.” So the legendary Talleyrand still lingers in serious literature. The story contains a gross anachronism, and the mere fact of the abbey being at Rheims points at once to the influence of Archbishop Talleyrand having obtained it for his nephew.
[6] I speak throughout the work of livres (=francs) unless I state otherwise. It is not true that, as is often said, the sum was invariable.
[7] Talleyrand signs the minutes (from which I take my account) under this name, but he is described in the scrutiny of titles as a sub-deacon. The title abbé was then given, not only to priests and abbés commendataires, but to many teachers and others who never took orders.
[8] Michaud tells that he first attended lectures on constitutional law at Strassburg for a few months. Talleyrand does not mention this.
[9] “Shall we ever teach him to be polite?” sighed one noble to Maurepas, after a lesson from the King on his irregularities.
[10] M. de Lacombe has investigated all the documents at Rheims, and so cleared up the mystery of his ordination—a mystery which had emboldened the myth-makers to say he received the episcopate whilst in minor orders.
[11] I do not know whether it is necessary to point out that, though Talleyrand was one of the most tactful and forbearing of men, he was bound to create numbers of enemies. When he passed on from the clergy and nobility to the Revolution, from the Directorate to Napoleon, from Napoleon to the Restoration, and finally from the Bourbons to the Orleanists, he left a shoal of bitter enemies behind him at each step. His personality, his caustic wit, and his curious experiences, formed an excellent nucleus for legends to gather about. You have to pick your way through hundreds of these to reach the real Talleyrand.
[12] It is interesting to note that he met Pitt (with Elliot and Wilberforce) at Rheims in 1783.