M. de Talleyrand declared, in his speech, that he had had "the misfortune to displease "Bonaparte" by unveiling the future to him, by revealing to him all the dangers which were about to arise from an act of aggression which was as unjust as it was reckless." Let M. de Talleyrand console himself in his grave: he did not have that misfortune; he must not add that calamity to all the afflictions of his life.
Talleyrand's diplomatic errors.
M. de Talleyrand's principal mistake as against the Legitimacy was that he deterred Louis XVIII. from concluding the proposed marriage between the Duc de Berry and a Russian Princess[376]; M. de Talleyrand's unpardonable mistake as against France was that he consented to the revolting Treaties of Vienna.
The result of M. de Talleyrand's negociations is that we are left without frontiers: a battle lost at Metz or Coblentz would bring the enemy's cavalry under the walls of Paris in a week. Under the Old Monarchy, not only was France enclosed within a circle of fortresses, but she was defended on the Rhine by the independent States of Germany. It was necessary to invade the electorates or negociate with them in order to reach us. On another frontier stood Switzerland, a neutral and free country; she had no roads; no one would violate her territory. The Pyrenees were impassable, guarded as they were by the Spanish Bourbons. That is what M. de Talleyrand failed to understand; those are the mistakes which will for ever condemn him as a politician: mistakes which, in one day, deprived us of the work of Louis XIV. and the victories of Napoleon.
It has been contended that his policy was superior to Napoleon's: in the first place, we must well bear in mind that a man is purely and simply a clerk, when he holds the portfolio of a conqueror who every morning puts into it the bulletin of a victory that changes the geography of States. When Napoleon had once become inebriated, he made mistakes so enormous as to strike every eye: M. de Talleyrand probably perceived them, like everybody else; but that points to no lynx-like vision. He compromised himself in a strange fashion in the catastrophe of the Duc d'Enghien; he was mistaken about the Spanish War of 1808, although he tried, later, to disown his advice and take back his words.
However, an actor creates no illusion, if he is utterly unprovided with means of fascinating the pit: therefore the prince's life was a perpetual deception. Knowing what he lacked, he avoided, shunned whosoever was able to know him: his constant study was not to allow his measure to be taken; he withdrew into silence at seasonable times; he concealed himself during the three dumb hours which he devoted to whist. Men wondered that so great a capacity could descend to the amusements of the vulgar: who knows if that capacity was not partitioning empires while sorting the four knaves in his hand? During those moments of juggling, he inwardly worded some effective phrase, inspired by a pamphlet of the morning or a conversation of the evening. If he took you on one side to render you illustrious by his conversation, his chief manner of seduction was to load you with praises, to call you the hope of the future, to prophesy brilliant destinies for you, to give you a bill of exchange as a great man, drawn upon himself and payable at sight; but, if he thought that your faith in him was a little open to suspicion, if he perceived that you did not sufficiently admire a few short sentences with pretensions of depth, but with nothing behind them, he went away, lest he should allow the end of his wit to come to the surface. He would have told a good story, were it not that his jests fell upon an underling or a fool, at whose cost he amused himself without danger, or upon a victim, attached to his person, who formed a butt for his jokes. He was unable to keep up a serious conversation: the third time that he opened his lips, his ideas evaporated.
Old engravings of the "Abbé de Périgord" represent a very pretty man; as he grew old, M. de Talleyrand's face had turned into a death's head: his eyes were dull, so that one had a difficulty in reading them, which served his purpose. As he had received a great deal of contempt, he had soaked himself in it and placed it in the two hanging corners of his mouth.
A great manner, which came from his birth, a strict observance of the niceties, a cold and disdainful air contributed to keep up the illusion that surrounded the Prince de Bénévent. His manners exercised an empire over second-rate people and the men of the new society, to whom the society of the old days was unknown. Formerly one met persons at every turn whose ways resembled M. de Talleyrand's, and one took no notice of them; but, almost alone in the field in the midst of democratic customs, he appeared a phenomenon: in order to submit to the yoke of his forms, it suited self-love to ascribe to the minister's wit the ascendant exercised by his breeding.
When, occupying a considerable place, you find yourself mixed up with prodigious revolutions, these give you a chance importance which the common herd take for your personal merit: lost in Bonaparte's rays, M. de Talleyrand shone, under the Restoration, with the brightness borrowed from a fortune that was not his. The accidental position of the Prince de Bénévent permitted him to attribute to himself the power of overthrowing Napoleon and the honour of restoring Louis XVIII.: have I myself, like all those gapers, not been foolish enough to fall into that fable? When I was better informed, I came to know that M. de Talleyrand was not a political Warwick: his arm lacked the strength that lays low and raises thrones.