Her eccentricities.
I have not seen Madame Sand dressed as a man or wearing the smock-frock and the ferruled stick of the mountaineer; I have not seen her drink of the bacchantes' cup or smoke, seated indolently on a sofa, like a sultana: these are natural or affected singularities that would add nothing, in my eyes, to her charm or her genius.
Is she more inspired when she sends a cloud from her mouth to mount up around her hair? Did Lélia escape from her mother's brain through a burning puff of smoke, even as Sin, according to Milton, issued from the head of the beautiful, guilty archangel amid a whirl of flame[354]? I do not know what happens in the Heavens; but, here below, Néméade[355], Phila[356], Lais[357], the witty Gnathæna[358], Phryne[359], the despair of Apelles'[360] pencil and Praxiteles'[361] chisel, Lesena[362], who was loved by Harmodius[363], the two sisters surnamed Aphyes, because they were slender and had large eyes, Dorica, whose head-band and perfumed robe were dedicated in the temple of Venus: all these enchantresses, in fine, knew none but the perfumes of Araby. Madame Sand, it is true, has on her side the authority of the Odalisks and the young Mexican girls who dance with a cigar between their lips.
After a few superior women and so many charming women whom I have met, after those daughters of the earth who said, like Madame Sand, with Sappho, "Come, in our delicious banquets, O mother of Eros, to fill our goblets with the nectar of the roses," what effect did the sight of Madame Sand have on me? Placing myself alternately in the domain of fiction and truth, I find the author of Valentine making two very different impressions upon me. In the domain of fiction: I will not speak of that, for I must have ceased to understand its language. In that of reality: as a man of a serious age, entertaining notions of seemliness, attaching, as a Christian, the highest price to the timid virtues of woman, I could not say how unhappy I was made at the sight of so many fine qualities abandoned to those prodigal and fickle hours which consume and fly.
Paris, 1838.
In the spring of this year 1838, I busied myself with the Congrès de Vérone[364], which I was obliged to publish by the terms of my literary engagements: I have told you of it in its proper place in these Memoirs.
A man has gone[365]: that guard of the aristocracy escorts to the rear the mighty plebeians who have already departed. When M. de Talleyrand first appeared in my political career, I said a few words about him[366]. Now his whole existence has become known to me through his last hour, to use the fine expression of one of the ancients.
Talleyrand.
I have had relations with M. de Talleyrand: as a man of honour, I have been faithful to him, as the reader will have observed, especially in the matter of the disagreement at Mons, when I most gratuitously ruined myself for him[367]. I was too simple; I shared in anything that happened to him of a disagreeable character; I pitied him when Maubreuil slapped his face[368]. There was a time when he ran after me in a coquettish manner; he wrote to me at Ghent, as you have read, that I was a "strong man[369];" when I was staying in the Rue des Capucines, he sent me, with perfect gallantry, a seal of the Foreign Office, a talisman doubtless engraved under his constellation. It is, perhaps, because I did not abuse his generosity that he became my enemy without any provocation on my part, if it was not because of a few successes which I obtained and which were not his handiwork. His tattle ran through society and did not offend, for M. de Talleyrand could not offend any one; but his intemperance of language has released me and, since he permitted himself to judge me, he left me free to make use of the same right in respect to him.
M. de Talleyrand's vanity duped him: he mistook the part which he played for his genius; he thought himself a prophet, while deceiving himself in all things; his authority had no value in matters concerning the future; he was quite unable to see ahead: he saw only behind him. Deprived of the strength of the outlook and light of conscience, he discovered nothing like superior intelligence, he appreciated nothing like uprightness. He made much of the accidents of fortune, when those accidents, which he never foresaw, had taken place, but only for himself personally. He knew nothing of that large ambition in which the interests of public glory are wrapped as the most profitable treasure for private interests. M. de Talleyrand, therefore, does not belong to the class of beings calculated to become one of those fantastic creatures to whom men's opinions, whether forced or deceived, are constantly adding fanciful attributes. Nevertheless it is certain that several sentiments, agreeing with one another for different reasons, concur to form an imaginary Talleyrand.