Our species is divided into two unequal parts: the men of death, loved by death, a chosen band which is born again; the men of life, forgotten by life, a multitude condemned to annihilation which is born no more. The temporary existence of these latter consists of name, credit, place, fortune; their fame, their authority, their power fade away with their person: closed are their drawing-room and their coffin, closed is their destiny. Thus befell M. de Talleyrand; his mummy, before descending into its crypt, was shown for a moment in London[379], as the representative of the corpse-like Royalty that reigns over us.
Talleyrand's depravity.
M. de Talleyrand betrayed all governments and, I repeat, raised or overthrew none. He had no real superiority, in the sincere acceptance of those two words. A fry of trite prosperities, so common in aristocratic life, does not take a man two feet beyond the grave. The evil which is not worked with a terrible explosion, the evil parsimoniously exerted by the slave for the master's benefit is no more than turpitude. Vice, the pander of crime, enters into domestic service. Suppose M. de Talleyrand a plebeian, poor, obscure, having, besides his immorality, nothing save his incontestable drawing-room wit: we should certainly never have heard speak of him. Take away from M. de Talleyrand the debased great lord, the married priest, the degraded bishop: what remains to him? His reputation and his successes have depended on that treble depravity.
The comedy with which the prelate crowned his eighty-two years is a pitiful thing: first, to give a proof of strength, he went to pronounce at the Institute the common eulogy of a poor German dolt[380] whom he did not care about. In spite of all the sights with which our eyes have been glutted, people lined up to see the great man go out[381]; next, he came to die at home, like Diocletian, showing himself to the universe. The crowd gaped at the last moments[382] of that prince three parts rotten, with a gangrenous aperture in his side, his head falling on his breast in spite of the bandage that supported it, he disputing minute by minute his reconciliation with Heaven, his niece playing beside him a part long prepared between a priest who was imposed upon and a little girl who was deceived. Weary of resistance, when his power of speech was about to leave him, he signed (or perhaps he did not even sign) the disavowal of his early adhesion to the Constitutional Church; but without giving any sign of repentance, without fulfilling the Christian's last duties, without retracting the immorality and scandal of his life. Never did pride appear so contemptible, admiration so foolish, piety so greatly duped. Rome, always prudent, did not make the retractation public, for a very good reason.
Talleyrand's death.
M. de Talleyrand failed to put in an appearance in answer to a long-standing summons issued by the Judgment Seat on High; death sought him on the part of God and has found him at last.
To analyze minutely a life as corrupted as that of M. de Lafayette was healthy, one would have to face a distaste which I am incapable of overcoming. Men of sores resemble prostitutes' carcasses: they have been so much eaten away by the ulcers that they are of no use to the dissecting-room. The French Revolution is one vast political destruction, set in the midst of the old world; let us fear lest a much more fatal destruction be established, let us fear a moral destruction through the evil side of that Revolution. What would become of the human race if a strenuous attempt were made to rehabilitate manners justly stigmatized, to offer odious examples to our enthusiasm, to show us the progress of the age, the establishment of liberty, the profundity of genius in abject natures and atrocious actions? Not daring to extol the evil under its own name, they sophisticate it: beware of taking that brute for a spirit of darkness; it is an angel of light! All ugliness is beautiful, every shame honourable, every enormity sublime; every vice has its admiration awaiting it. We have gone back to that material society of paganism in which every form of depravity had its altars. Back, those cowardly, lying, criminal praises, which pervert the public conscience, which debauch youth, which discourage good people, which are an outrage against virtue and the spitting of the Roman soldier in the face of Christ!
Paris, 1839.
When I was in Prague, in 1833, Charles X. said to me:
"So that old Talleyrand is still alive?"