Have you read, in the archives of the Foreign Office, the diplomatic correspondence relating to the most important events at the period of that correspondence?
"No."
At least you have read the printed correspondence: you know the negociations of Du Bellay, of d'Ossat, of Du Perron, of the Président Jeannin[85], the State Memoirs of Villeroi[86], the Économies royales of Sully[87]; you have seen the Memoirs of the Cardinal de Richelieu[88], numbers of letters of Mazarin, the papers and documents relating to the Treaty of Westphalia[89], to the Peace of Munster[90]? You know Barillon's[91] Dispatches on English affairs; the negociations on the Spanish Succession are not unfamiliar to you; the name of Madame des Ursins has not escaped you; M. de Choiseul's[92] Family Compact has come under your notice; you are not unacquainted with Ximenes[93], Olivarez[94] and Pombal[95], Hugo Grotius on the liberty of the seas[96], his letters to the two Oxenstierns[97], the Negociations of the Grand Pensionary de Witt[98] with Peter Grotius[99], the second son of Hugo; in fine, the collection of diplomatic treaties has perhaps attracted your attention?
"No."
My diplomatic dispatches.
So you have read none of those sempiternal lucubrations? Well then, read them; when you have done so, pass over my Spanish War, the success of which troubles you, although it forms my chief claim to be classed as a statesman; take my dispatches from Prussia, England and Rome, place them beside the other dispatches which I have mentioned: and then, with your hand on your conscience, tell me which have bored you most; tell me if my work and the work of my predecessors are not quite similar; if the grasp of small things and of "practical" matters is not as manifest on my part as on that of the past ministers and defunct ambassadors.
First of all, you will notice that I have an eye for everything; that I occupy myself with Reshid Pasha[100] and M. de Blacas; that I defend my privileges and rights as Ambassador to Rome against all comers; that I am crafty, false (an eminent quality!) and cunning to such an extent that, when M. de Funchal, in an equivocal position, writes to me, I do not reply to him, but go to see him with astute politeness, so that he is unable to show a line in my handwriting and is nevertheless satisfied. There is not an imprudent word to be criticized in my conversations with Cardinals Bernetti and Albani, the two secretaries of State; nothing escapes me; I descend to the pettiest details; I restore the accounts of the affairs of the French in Rome in such a way that they still exist on the basis on which I have placed them. With an eagle's glance, I perceive that the Treaty of Trinità de' Monti, between the Holy See and the Ambassadors Laval and Blacas, is irregular, and that neither party had the right to conclude it. Mounting higher, and coming to the greater diplomacy, I take upon myself to give the exclusion to a cardinal, because a minister of foreign affairs has left me without instructions and exposes me to seeing a creature of Austria elected Pope. I procure the secret journal of the Conclave: a thing that no ambassador has ever been able to obtain; day by day I send the list of names and votes. Nor do I neglect Bonaparte's family: I do not despair, by means of good treatment, of persuading Cardinal Fesch to send in his resignation as Archbishop of Lyons. If a Carbonaro stirs, I am informed of it and able to judge how much truth there is in the conspiracy; if an abbé intrigues, I am aware of it, and I baffle the plans that had been formed to separate the French cardinals from the French Ambassador. Lastly, I discover that a great secret has been deposited by the Cardinal de Latil in the bosom of the Grand Penitentiary. Are you satisfied? Is that a man who knows his trade? Very well, and now see: I dispatched all this diplomatic business like the first ambassador that comes, without its costing me an idea, in the same way as a booby of a Lower Norman peasant knits his stockings while watching his sheep: my sheep were my dreams.
Now here is another point of view: if you compare my official letters with the official letters of my predecessors, you will see that mine treat of general affairs as well as private affairs, that I am drawn by the character of the ideas of my century into a loftier region of the human mind. This may be observed more particularly in the dispatch in which I speak to M. Portalis of the state of Italy, in which I set forth the mistake of the cabinets which take for private conspiracies that which is only the development of civilization. The Memorandum on the War in the East also exposes truths of a political order which are out of the common. I have talked with two Popes of other things than cabinet intrigues; I have obliged them to speak to me of religion, liberty, the future destiny of the world. My speech delivered at the door of the Conclave has the same character. I dared to tell old men to go forward and place religion once again at the head of the march of society.
My political successes.
Readers, wait for me to end my boasting so as next to come to the object, in the manner of the philosopher Plato making a circuit round his idea. I have become old Sidrac; age prolongs my weary road[101]. I continue: I shall be a long while yet. Several writers of our time have a mania for disdaining their literary talent in order to follow their political talent, which they value far above the former. Thank God, I am governed by a contrary instinct: I make little of politics, for the very reason that I have been lucky at the game. To succeed in public life, it is not a question of acquiring qualities, but a matter of losing them. I shamelessly admit my aptitude for practical things, without cherishing the smallest illusion touching the obstacle within myself which opposes my complete success. That obstacle has nothing to do with the Muse; it arises from my indifference to everything. With this defect, it is impossible to achieve anything completely, in practical life.