The Diplomatists of Europe

by M. Capefigue

Lord Palmerston entered into Talleyrand's plans. England confined herself to a few nautical parades in the Black Sea, but from this time a coldness sprung up between the two diplomatists. The English minister is a person of very irritable temper, touchy, and of a changeable disposition, and Talleyrand took a great dislike to him; and as, on the other side, the cabinet of which Lord Melbourne was the chief was drawn on from one concession to another, he soon resolved to leave England. It was announced that his health was failing, and he went into the country to seek peace in retirement. Like Pythagoras when the thunder is heard from afar, Talleyrand preferred the desert and the echo. During his last journey to Paris he became friends with Count Pozzo di Borgo, that is to say, with the Russian idea. The two diplomatists did not venture as yet to hold any official communications, but they often met in little mysterious banquets, in a diplomatic retreat at Bellevue.

Talleyrand quitted London, popular clamour was a source of annoyance to him; it was no longer a dispute between one portion of the aristocracy and another, from henceforth it appeared to be the people against the aristocracy itself: and the stake was too great. He therefore left England definitively for Valençay, explaining, in a most dignified letter, the reason of his retirement. There is a period with politicians when they begin to live for posterity; they then all seek an opportunity of explaining themselves, of laying open their conduct, and striving to rectify the judgment of future times—they feel a desire of revealing themselves solemnly to the public; and such was the motive which induced Talleyrand to speak at a meeting of the French Institute. He said but a few words on the occasion of an éloge that had been pronounced, but those few afforded an explanation of the motives that had actuated a long and busy political life, passed in the midst of governments, passions, and parties.

After this time Talleyrand lived either in Paris or on his estates in the country, and was always consulted with the most profound veneration by all the thinking heads of government. He at one time had some idea of going to Vienna to accomplish a plan suggested by the Duchess de Dino, which would unite the two families of Talleyrand and Esterhazy. The latter, it is well known, is the richest family in Austria, and during the last seven years Madame de Dino had paid great attention to her uncle's affairs, and had been so successful in her management that his property was quite free from debt, and one of the most considerable of the present day. The fortune of M. de Talleyrand, after so many reverses, is said almost to resemble one of the fairy tales in the "Arabian Nights."

There are few political characters with whom the press has been more busy than with Prince Talleyrand, during the latter years of his life. Every step he took, every gesture, every action, was made the subject of the most contradictory reports. He had now attained his eighty-fourth year, and it was evident his faculties were beginning to suffer considerably from his advanced age. He was merely the shadow of his former self. Every now and then there would be a gleam of his powerful intellect, but they would soon disappear again in the weakness caused by extreme age, and so busy and exhausted a life. He could no longer walk a single step, but was carried about or wheeled in a chair, and the slightest jolt drew from him tears of suffering—most miserable resemblance that exists between decrepitude and childhood! In fact, his career was come to an end, though they in vain strove to prolong it by endeavouring to rouse him.

That career had indeed been marvellous, and though Prince Talleyrand be reproached with the constant changeableness of his opinions, we may observe the same principle predominant under all circumstances—the alliance with England. I have selected the Duc de Richelieu as the type of the Russian alliance, and in comparing the services of these two political characters, we shall easily discover that the duke did more service to his country during the short time that he held the reins of government than Prince Talleyrand in his lengthened career, because Richelieu had adopted a more national plan, one more favourable to our foreign interests. Talleyrand never was subservient to any particular government or doctrine. He had a sort of personal feeling which degenerated into selfishness. He did not betray Napoleon in the literal sense of the word, he only quitted him in time; neither did he actually betray the Restoration, he abandoned it when it was abandoning itself. No doubt there is a good deal of selfishness in this system, whose first thought is of its own situation and fortune, and afterwards of the government it serves; but, perhaps, it is hardly to be expected we should find in men of very great talent the degree of self-denial which leads to a blind devotion towards a person or a cause. Talleyrand was a little inclined to apply to himself the expressions he was accustomed to address to his employés when he was minister for foreign affairs: "There are two things, gentlemen, which I forbid in the most positive manner,—too much zeal and too absolute devotion, because they compromise both persons and affairs." Such was the mind of Talleyrand; with a cold heart and barren imagination, he was compared to a real tactician, judging men and parties with mathematical precision. He reserved all his activity for the decisive moments which overturned thrones and governments, when he considered prompt action as of importance. In revolutions his experience had been very great; he immediately understood the value of a situation, and decided upon it by an apophthegm, which at once struck home. His was, perhaps, the mind which was most capable of foreseeing, least able to prevent, and most skilled in deriving advantage from the different phases of empires.

But now his life was drawing to a close, and symptoms of approaching death appeared on every side. For a long time he had been afflicted with a painful complaint, which he bore with less resignation than he had exhibited under political events; the attacks were very violent, and the prince became subject to constant fainting fits—warning symptoms of the approach of his last enemy. The total decay of Talleyrand was apparent to every body; the sharpness and delicacy of his wit every now and then shot forth a dying gleam, but the man was at an end. His visits to the Tuileries were a most melancholy spectacle, a sad memorial of the nothingness of human greatness. Alas! that vast intellect was fast sinking into second childhood. His complaint was incurable; it was in the first place old age, and then, also, an old affection of anthrax, or white gangrene, for which he was obliged to undergo a very painful operation, and after it was performed the agonies of death followed in rapid succession. He was perfectly aware of the danger of his situation, and considered it a point of dignity not to appear alarmed, but went through all the proper etiquette with death. For a considerable time he had been in communication with a pious ecclesiastic in Paris; before him was the example of his family, and the recollection of his uncle the Cardinal, of blessed memory; and of late years his benefactions to the chapel of Valençay had been very great, both in magnificent donations and pious endowments. Though he had forgotten his religious obligations, he had never made an open profession of impiety, and had preserved a considerable degree of loftiness of mind, so that when the thought of death was presented to him he did not shrink from a retractation. No person was better aware of the weakness and puerile vanity of professed free-thinkers.

This retractation was not the offspring of a sudden impulse; on the contrary, it had been concerted three months before with infinite care, as if it had been a diplomatic paper sent to the church. Full of submission, yet with a mixture of dignity, the prince addressed it to the sovereign pontiff, repenting all his participation in the scandals by which his life had been stained, particularly his adhesion to the civil constitution of the clergy; and he now acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Paris, and submitted to the Catholic laws of the holy see. This was the manner in which he prepared for death. Accounts of the state of his health were incessantly despatched to Neuilly; he had rendered great services to Louis Philippe, who had often consulted him and derived the benefit of his experience, and who was now resolved to pay a last visit to the last descendant of the Périgords. When the king was announced, the prince said with a feeble voice, but without any appearance of emotion, as if the attention were due to him,—"It is the greatest honour my house has received."

There was a strong aristocratic feeling in the expression, 'My house;' it signified that, though the visit was honourable to his family, there was nothing to cause surprise in it. Neither did he forget, even at that moment, the etiquette which forbids that any body should stand in the presence of a sovereign without being presented, and he immediately added, in a calm tone, "I have a duty to fulfil—it is to present to your majesty the persons who are in the room, and who have not yet had that honour;" and he introduced his physician, his surgeon, and his valet-de-chambre. This behaviour when at the point of death bore the stamp of high aristocratic manners, perfectly in keeping with the visit with which his last moments had been honoured; it was part of the decorum and ancient ceremony observed between noble families; the escutcheons of both bore the same relative rank; the youngest branch of the Bourbons went to visit the youngest branch of the Périgords. In ancient times the houses of Navarre and De Quercy had met together on the common field of battle, and the cry Re que Diou had been uttered at the same time with the war-cry of Henry IV., by the old southern nobility, the language of Oc being common to both.

People expressed surprise at the signal honour conferred upon Talleyrand, but it shewed that the customs of gentle blood were not comprehended by the spirit of inferior society. No one was more attached to his illustrious descent than the old diplomatist, and the younger branch of the Bourbons came itself of too good a stock to forget it; the two cadets of De Quercy and Navarre had met in the recollection of their race, as in their political life.

Surrounded by his family in his last moments, and assisted by the pious offices of the Abbé Dupanloup, vicar-general of the diocese of Paris, Prince Talleyrand received the sacraments of the Church, for he had been again admitted into her bosom, and, before expiring, he again uttered one of those happy expressions which were so often upon his lips. Observing one of his grandnieces dressed entirely in white, according to the custom observed before the first communion, he raised his heavy eyelids, kissed her forehead, gave her his blessing, and then turning to the spectators, he said, "See the way of the world—there is the beginning, here the end!" In a few minutes afterwards he expired, on the 18th of May, 1838, at ten minutes before four o'clock in the afternoon, having just completed his eighty-fourth year. He left a will, by which his immense fortune was well and wisely disposed of. Has he also left memoirs? I think I know; but these memoirs are deposited in the hands of his family, or of other people of whose discretion he was quite secure.