EXILE
Talleyrand arrived at Paris just in time to witness the last weak struggle of order against anarchy. Lafayette had flown back to Paris, had fruitlessly appealed to the Legislative Assembly against the Jacobins, had just as fruitlessly appealed to lawless order against lawless disorder, and had retired in despair to his army. However, the Department of Paris, which still represented the orderly and stable elements of the city, had suspended the Mayor, Pétion, the day after Talleyrand left London. The forest of pikes glistened in the streets once more, and the Legislative Assembly was forced to restore Pétion to office and abandon the Department. Talleyrand, la Rochefoucauld, and other moderates, then resigned their positions, and awaited the next step of the mob and the Jacobins. The following day was the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and though it passed quietly Talleyrand would observe the fiercer attitude of the crowd and its emblems. He and la Rochefoucauld were passing under the balcony of the Tuileries that evening when the Queen nodded to them. Talleyrand must havemade his own reflections on this; also on the unpleasant spirit it at once provoked in the crowd.
Talleyrand lingered beyond his fortnight. The atmosphere was sultry, electric. Something would happen soon—something graver than all the grave rest. Provincial petitions began to trickle in praying for the deposition of the King. On August 3rd Mayor Pétion comes openly, at the head of the municipal officers in their tricolour scarves, to demand it of the Assembly. The fiery Marseillais have arrived; fiery troops are pouring in from all parts of France. The official declaration that “the country is in danger” has strengthened the Jacobins. On the 8th of August the Assembly refuse to condemn Lafayette, and its refusing majority is hunted by the crowd. On the 9th it must discuss the question of the deposition of the King. It can come to no resolution, and sits wavering between the pale ghost of loyalty and the city of pikes. That night the insurrection becomes fully conscious of its power. At sunrise the grim flood surges again about the walls and flows over the terraces and through the outer gates of the Tuileries. The Swiss guards are provoked into firing, and within a few hours nearly 2,000 lie dead. Paris has tasted blood now with fearful effect. It has 1,200 patriots to avenge. The King is “suspended”; a National Convention is summoned, with no restriction whatever on electors or candidates.
DANTON.
DANTON.
What Talleyrand thought at this time we do not know, but we can confidently assume. The last particleof his constitutional ideal was disappearing. Still he clung to France for a few days. Danton, now all-powerful as Minister of Justice, had been his colleague in the Department, and seems to have been not indifferent to him. Something might yet be done. They induced him to write a defence of the events of the 10th to pacify England. This document—which must be admitted to come from Talleyrand’s pen—has been gravely censured. It is certainly a desperate appeal, but, save for an odd phrase that is diplomatically exaggerated, is not indefensible. We can well imagine what the French papers in London were making of the 10th. Talleyrand, in the name of the new executive (bound to defend its supporters), put the other side of the matter. He strongly, but justly, criticises the conduct of the royal family, as being seriously provocative. The only downright injustice is when he speaks of the Swiss guards as the “cowardly satellites” of the monarchy. Lady Blennerhassett thinks this unpardonable. It is certainly a harsh phrase to write over men who died a brave and noble death, but the truth is that many of them were encouraging the crowd to advance when the others (unknown to them very probably) began their deadly fire.
Lady Blennerhassett sees a grave inconsistency, inspired by a base motive, in Talleyrand’s protesting against the affair of June 20th, and then condoning the worse attack of August 10th and siding with the Jacobins. We must remember that many things hadhappened since July 13th. Hostile armies hung threateningly on the frontier; one must take desperate measures now to secure the continued neutrality of England. Further, on July 13th it was not at all certain that the Jacobins could not be checked; it was now clear that one must work with them or through them, or desert the country to its fate, for no human judgment, not patriotically intoxicated, could see how Prussia, Austria and Brunswick were to be held off. It is a sheer perversion of history to say that Talleyrand deserted the King after August 10th. He had deserted hiscauselong ago; hisperson, his life and liberty, Talleyrand never willingly saw endangered; nor did he ever cease to be a partisan of limited monarchy. It is, indeed, a question if the events of August 10th did not put the royalist cause in a more hopeful plight. Certainly the royalists thought so. These events doubled the pace of the armies that were heading towards Paris. Finally, it is quite impossible to see that Talleyrand expected any advantage out of the new administration.
Briefly, then, Talleyrand was perfectly consistent in writing the official “explanation” of August 10th. One would imagine from some of the references to it that it was a blatantly patriotic boast of the affair; one need only recollect that it was written by an astute diplomatist to a well-informed country, and for a strictly conciliatory purpose. It merely pointed out the extenuating features of the “terrible events” with diplomatic casuistry. Wemust not judge Talleyrand as if he had ever believed in the divine right of Kings. Nor had he any particular grounds of personal loyalty to King or Queen; nor can he be accused of untruth in laying on the royalist cause the burden of the Austrian and Prussian invasions.
But Lady Blennerhassett is herself unpardonable when she says Talleyrand’s destiny “dragged him deeper still, into the bloody torrent of the September massacres.” This is a most unhappy way of expressing the fact that Talleyrand was a disgusted spectator of those awful scenes, and that he fled the country as soon as they happened. We lose sight of him from August 18th, when he penned the diplomatic defence of Danton, until September 14th. On that day Barrère finds him leaving Danton’s room in travelling dress with a passport for London.23Danton had sent his friend Noel to London to supersede Chauvelin and keep England neutral. At the beginning of September Noel had written to say that negotiations seemed possible (August 10th had evidently not been regarded as inexcusable at London), and Danton had thought the conditions suggested were not inacceptable. Meantime, the hostile forces were converging successfully on Paris. On August 29th comes terrible news of Prussians, Austrians and Brunswick, and of the rising in La Vendée. There are not weapons, when even women offer to bear them. Danton gets an order for a visitation of suspected houses and incarceration ofsuspects. Royalists are leading every invading army. Paris is in the last stage of the new “intoxication.” The awful story of the first week of September has been told often enough. By Thursday evening Talleyrand would hear that more than a thousand men and women, mostly innocent, had been savagely murdered. The next day he obtained from Danton a passport: “Leave to pass to Citizen Talleyrand, going to London by our order.”
The last phase of the movement he had followed since May 6th, 1789, was too repulsive. He could say no longer that “provided he remained French, he was prepared for anything.” He was not prepared for murder. His one thought was to leave France. On the pretext of a mission to persuade England to adopt the metrical system he received permission to leave. Research in the archives of the Foreign Office has brought to light (says M. Pallain) a letter in which Talleyrand asks permission to return and continue his work in London before the end of August, when the guillotine had already begun its work. He did not, therefore wait until there was personal danger before he fled. He did not cling to ruling powers until their long lists were drawn up. However, he would probably have less difficulty than is supposed in securing permission to leave from Danton. It was more than ever imperative to have an able man in London. The British Ambassador, like all others, had fled from Paris. Noel had to face a storm of indignation in England.Danton would, one imagines, see no more useful man in the emergency than Talleyrand. However that may be, he left Paris on September 14th, not to return until the long story of the reign of violence was over. His “real aim” was, he says, to get away from France; but he applied for a passport so as not to close the door behind him in the event of his wishing to return.
He arrived in England on the 23rd, only to find, as he expected, his whole diplomatic work in sad danger. He announced his arrival to the Foreign Office, denying that he had any mission, but expressing his readiness to give information. He was not invited to give any. A good deal has been written on the question whether he had a mission or no, but the solution is hardly obscure when all the evidence is read. While denying in England (and even in a letter to Danton) that he had any mission, he told several correspondents that he had, and in his later petition from America he claimed that he was enjoined to prevent a rupture between England and France. The conflict of evidence is easily reconciled if we suppose he had an informal, secret understanding to that effect with Danton. It is the most likely thing to happen in the circumstances. In any case he had not long to continue his delicate task. The Opposition in England was prepared to support him to very great lengths, even after the triumphant Jacobins at Paris had decreed a war of revolutionary propaganda. Talleyrand always regarded this as a fatal step, and he even now wrote to Paristo counteract the feeling. The very able memorandum “On the actual relations of France to the other States of Europe,” which he forwarded to Lebrun, now Chief Minister, and to several members of the Convention, has been published by Pallain. It is a finely-written and sober political document. To the new idea of French dominance he replies that “the only useful and reasonable dominance, the only one that becomes free and enlightened men, is to be master of one’s self, and never to make the ridiculous pretention to domineer over others.” It is time that a mature France had done with illusions. An understanding with free nations, for peaceful, commercial purposes, should be the ideal. Wars of aggrandisement should be condemned. It is a very sincere and admirable political gospel.
By a curious chance it must have reached Paris24just before the Convention began to discuss the question of putting its author on the list of emigrants, forbidden to return under pain of death. A letter had been found amongst the King’s papers, in which Laporte, the King’s steward, had reported (in April, 1791) that Talleyrand was anxious to serve him. On the strength of this letter condemnation was passed on December 5th, and Talleyrand was made an exile. A letter, signed D. (probably from des Renaudes, but possibly Danton), wasinserted in theMoniteurin defence of Talleyrand. It appealed to the minister Lebrun, and others to whom Talleyrand had sent his patriotic memorandum a few days before, to produce this proof of his loyalty. Talleyrand himself wrote a letter to theGazettein which he flatly denied that he had any relations whatever with the King or Laporte. He claimed that the only particle of truth on which one could make such a statement was that he had written a report in defence of freedom of worship (which we have considered, dated May 7th, 1791), in which he upheld the King’s right to the ministration of a non-juring priest. Laporte, he said, must have seen this memorandum as it circulated privately—as so many speeches did—before May 7th, and interpreted it to mean that Talleyrand favoured the King. It is likely enough, and at all events we have no further evidence. But the defence was of no avail. Talleyrand remained on the proscribed list for three years.
It is not probable that Talleyrand would have ventured again to live at Paris during those years. Hewasan aristocrat, even if he clothed himself from head to foot in tricolour. He was a man of refined and humane temper, and could not possibly have co-operated further with the sanguinary parties that now came to power. At the most he would wish to retain a distant connection in the event of an improvement in the condition of Paris. A few days after reaching London, in accepting an invitation to Bowood, he wrote to LordLansdowne that “when one has passed the last two months at Paris one needs to come and refresh oneself with the conversation of superior people.” Then came news of the impeachment and trial of the King. London listened with growing horror and disgust to the details of the “trial.” On January 21st Louis was guillotined. On January 24th the late French ambassador, Chauvelin, the only official-looking Frenchman the Government could find, was swept out of England. On February 1st the Convention declared war against England and Holland (the one entanglement that endangered England’s neutrality). Talleyrand found the door which he had so cleverly contrived to leave open violently slammed upon him.
He says in the memoirs that he did not intend to stay long in England. In fact, we know now that he applied about this time for permission to settle in Tuscany, but the Grand Duke had to refuse on the ground of his neutrality. The position must have been trying for a man of Talleyrand’s taste and ambition. If we may trust his later observations, his mind wandered unsteadily from one country to another and one occupation to another. He settled down, however, to the life of an emigrant in London, and managed to spend a year not unpleasantly. His library had been transferred to London,25and he spent his mornings in writing. Hedoes not tell us the subject, but says that when he had returned to France a huge mass of his notes and memoranda came over from London. He would have us believe that they proved of little use for the writing of his memoirs, but the chapter on the Duc d’Orléans is so ample and circumstantial that it seems to have been written at an early date, and was not improbably written in 1793. It affords a thorough reply to the rumours, for which no documentary ground has ever been discovered by his most bitter enemies, that he was secretly working with the Orleanist group. He did not frequent the Palais Royal in a political capacity.
But in spite of emigrant hatred and the general British hostility to France, he found a sufficiently large social circle in London. Mme. de Genlis had come to England with her niece. Talleyrand offered her a little money out of his small fund, and actually did assist other compatriots. Many of them were, as is known, living in bitter poverty. Mme. de Staël came over in January and remained until the summer. She took a house near Richmond, and Talleyrand spent a good deal of his time there. In Kensington the Countess de la Châtre kept a house, where many of Talleyrand’s old friends met. Narbonne had with difficulty got away—with the assistance of Mme. de Staël and Talleyrand—atthe beginning of September. Rivarol and Lalley-Tollendal and many other constitutionalists were there. Fox and Sheridan and their friends afforded a fairly large circle of English acquaintances. Lord Lansdowne continued friendly long after he left England. At his house Talleyrand speaks of frequently meeting Hastings, Price, Priestley, Romilly, and Jeremy Bentham. His reputation for culture and conversation opened many doors. Sydney Smith was brought in contact with him somewhere, and says that he found him unequal to his reputation; but one imagines that Sydney Smith would not be unbiassed, and he admits he could not understand his French. The German physician, Bollmann, found him so charming that he “could listen to him for years.” On the whole, Talleyrand fared better than most of his indigent companions, though the enforced idleness annoyed him. “Patience and sleep,” he told Mme. de Staël, was his programme for the present. In another letter he described his chief occupations as “fishing and correcting proofs” (of Mme. de Flahaut’s novel).
It is from the letters he wrote to Mme. de Staël after her return to France that we find he is still watching the situation in that country without despair. In one letter he sketches a plan. The southern provinces, which still show some attachment to the constitution, should unite, and invite the members of the old Constituent Assembly to meet at Toulon. He believes that the nation is still attached to theconstitution, and that it is really in the supposed defence of this that they have risen against King and invaders. When he hears of the execution of the Queen he has to modify his view. “It is all over with the house of Bourbon in France,” he says; but he never believed that France would remain permanently republican. His wistful speculations, which were equally resented by republicans in France and royalists out of it (who charged the constitutionalists with bringing all his misfortunes on the King), were cut short at the beginning of 1794 by a peremptory order to quit England within five days (in another place Talleyrand says twenty-four hours).
From an engraving, after the picture by F. Gérard.MADAME DE STAËL.
From an engraving, after the picture by F. Gérard.
MADAME DE STAËL.
The order was inexcusable, but no influence that Talleyrand could command had any effect on it. A law had been passed twelve months before empowering the Government to expel undesirable aliens, and it had been applied to Noel and Chauvelin. Talleyrand may have feared its extension to him at first, when he applied for residence in Tuscany, but he was not prepared for this cruel application after twelve months of peaceful life in London. He pressed his most influential friends to obtain some explanation, at least, of the order, but none was given. In the end, he attributed it to intrigues of his emigrant enemies, and one can see no other reason for it. He was the only distinguished Frenchman of moderate views to incur the order. Sainte-Beuve says it “proves he was not in the odour of virtue.” It, at all events, proved, if this needed proof, that he hadenemies. He protested to Pitt and to the King, but it was no use, and he took ship for America on February 3rd. His letters to Lord Lansdowne and Mme. de Staël show a very natural bitterness of feeling, but even at this time he hardly blamed England. But when the ship was detained at Greenwich he refused an invitation from Dundas to spend the time at his house, saying that he could not set foot on English soil again after receiving such an order.
The romantic biographers have enlivened his voyage with adventures. They tell how the Dutch vessel in which he sailed was stopped and searched by an English frigate, and Talleyrand dressed himself in the cook’s clothes to pass the scrutiny. M. Michaud, as usual, does not deign to mention his authority. Talleyrand only says that the ship was beaten back by heavy storms, and seemed at one time in danger of being driven on the French coast. It did put in at Falmouth for repairs, and Talleyrand landed there, so that his objection to English soil was relaxing. He was told that an American general was staying at an inn in the town, and he found that it was General Arnold, who would hardly give him an attractive picture of his future home. Whether it was from this conversation, or from a real weariness of spirit (or, in fine, a freak of memory in later years), he says that he did not want to leave ship when they reached Philadelphia. Another ship was sailing out as they reached the mouth of the Delaware, and he sent a boat to learn its destination. It was going to Calcutta,and he wanted, he says, to take a berth in it, but could not get one. He landed at Philadelphia with his companions, M. de Beaumetz and des Renaudes, towards the end of March.
A number of acquaintances had preceded him to America. When the emigration began people recollected the lively stories brought back by Lafayette and his companions, and many who either had wealth or wanted to make it sailed to the States. At Philadelphia, Talleyrand found a Dutchman named Casenove, whom he had known at Paris, and who now proved useful to him. There were half-a-dozen emigrants in Philadelphia, and they met at nights over gay but frugal suppers, at the house of Moreau-Saint-Méry, who had opened a book-store there. Michaud says Talleyrand opened a store for the sale of night-caps; the legend probably grew out of a curious custom of Talleyrand’s of wearing several of these at night. But Talleyrand was evidently very restless and irritated. Washington declined to grant him a formal interview, and Talleyrand refused, as he says, to go to see him by the back door. The only man whose friendship relieved the depression of that time was Colonel Alexander Hamilton, whom Talleyrand describes as the ablest statesman then living, not excepting Pitt and Fox. They had long conversations on political and economic subjects, and were happily agreed on most matters; though Hamilton was a moderate Protectionist and Talleyrand a strong Free-trader.
Talleyrand sought some relief by a voyage into the interior with Beaumetz and a Dutch friend, Heydecooper. He was not insensible to the natural beauty of the forests and prairies, which he describes with unusual literary care, but he was chiefly impressed with the vast possibilities of these leagues of uncultivated territory. Within a few miles of every sea-coast town you plunged into virgin forests, and from the hill-tops you looked over illimitable oceans of wild growth. A thoughtful traveller like Talleyrand could not but speculate on the future of the country. Convinced as he was of the primary importance of agriculture, the future of America had a peculiar interest for him. But as he wandered from town to town, and saw more of the people, he felt some disappointment in them. The idealist fervour which he expected to find still glowing, within a few years of the declaration of independence, seemed to be wholly extinct. In fact, if Talleyrand had been able to anticipate that elegant phrase, he would have said “making their pile” was the chief preoccupation of the Americans of 1794. Without bitterness, but with something like sadness, he tells a number of stories about his experience. He met a fairly rich man in one town who had never been to Philadelphia. He would like to see Washington, the man assented to Talleyrand’s inquiry, but he would very much rather see Bingham, who was reported to be very wealthy. At another place he noticed that his host put his hat—a hat that a Parisian stable-boy would notwear, he says—on a beautiful table of Sèvres porcelain brought from the Trianon. When Talleyrand speaks impatiently of America as “a country without a past,” he is thinking of these incongruities; there had not yet been time in the history of America for the fixing of inviolable canons. In some other respects the features of life in this new country were amusing. In a log cabin on the Ohio they found some good bronzes and a fine piano. When Beaumetz opened it, however, the owner had to ask him to spare them; the nearest tuner lived a hundred miles away, and had not called that year.
Talleyrand makes it clear that he understands how these features of American life are inseparable from its newness and its pioneering character, but he feels the discord too keenly to enjoy it on its adventurous and picturesque sides. “If I have to stay here another year I shall die,” he wrote to Mme. de Staël. He appreciates the sincerity of their religious life after that of pre-Revolutionary Paris, but a country of thirty-two religions and only one sauce does not suit him. He wrote a long letter to Lord Lansdowne (February 1st, 1795), with the view of bringing about a better understanding between England and America. The independence of the States is settled for ever, he says; there is no question whatever of a reversion to the status of a British colony. Nevertheless, though feeling is at present averted from England and turning towards France, the link between thetwo nations is strong and natural. All the institutions of America and all its economic features (which he discusses at great length) compel it to look in friendly interest to England. In June and July he sent other brief notes to Lord Lansdowne. In June, moreover, he heard of the rout of the Jacobins at Paris. In the memoirs he affirms (and the most indulgent admiration fails to ascribethisto a freak of memory) that the National Convention rescinded the decree against him “without any request on my part.” We have a copy of the petition he wrote to the Convention on June 16th, pressing for the removal of his name from the proscribed list. He urges that the reasons for putting him on the list were frivolous, but he had not been able to return to Paris to contest them, because “under the tyranny of Robespierre” the prisons were violated, and he would be executed without trial. It is probably about the same time that he wrote to Mme. de Staël, who quotes his words in a later letter to him.
Whether Talleyrand despaired of obtaining permission to return he does not say, but he tells us that in the autumn of 1795 he and his friend Beaumetz invested their small capital in stocking a ship for the East Indies. They had seen the first American adventurers return from India in 1794 with rich spoils, and seem to have caught the Indian fever that then broke out in America. They were joined by a number of Philadelphia firms, and their ship was about to start when the Fates intervened. Howthe biography of Talleyrand would have run if this adventure had been permitted it is difficult to conjecture. In fact, the whole story has a most undeniable odour of legend about it, but, apart from a few details (such as that of Beaumetz attempting to murder him in New York) which the romanticists add on their own authority, it is Talleyrand himself who tells it, in the memoirs. I am not quite sure that this puts it beyond dispute, but probably we should admit it, and see in it a proof of the most unusually restless and irritated temper he had fallen into in America. However, his petition had succeeded at Paris. Mme. de Staël, who was sincerely devoted to him, induced Legendre and Boissy d’Anglas to favour the petition. It was presented to the Convention on September 4th, and supported by M. J. Chénier and the ex-Oratorian, Daunou. Talleyrand’s name was erased from the list ofémigrés, and he was described as an unappreciated patriot. He had struck the right note in alluding to “the tyranny of Robespierre.” The various sections of the Terrorists had annihilated each other in mutual distrust; and more peaceful, if not quite more admirable, elements had come to power. In the summer of 1795 the Jacobin Club was closed, and the once terrible name was now laughingly hurled at one as “Jacoquin.” Sanculottist Paris had risen in insurrection twice, and had twice been chased back into its slums. Chénier had only to describe Talleyrand as a victim of the persecutions of Marat and Robespierre, and “the perfidy ofPitt,” and one whose “noble conduct as a priest and man had greatly promoted the Revolution,” and his name was struck off the black list. He let Beaumetz sail alone for India, bade farewell to Hamilton and la for Rochefoucauld and his many friends in the States, and sailed for Europe in a Danish vessel in November. He had not been thirty (as he says), but twenty, months in America. It had seemed longer.26
THE REGENERATED PARIS
The ship in which Talleyrand had sailed from America was bound for Hamburg, which it reached in January, 1796. The prudent diplomatist wanted to take a nearer look at the regenerated capital of his country before re-entering it. His discretion was timely. In October the mob had risen for a third time against the new authority, and Citizen Buonaparte had swept it back definitively into powerlessness in the space of two hours. But the new rulers had a strong family resemblance to the old. The five Directors had to be regicides; Sieyès, who had voted for “death without any fuss” on poor Louis, had made this new constitution. In the two new Chambers, the Council of the Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients, a two-thirds majority was to be taken over from the dissolving Convention. One-third had to be elected by the country, now returning to sobriety; but until the old majority should be broken by the retirement and re-election of a fresh third in May the situation was not reassuring. There remained a good deal of bitterness against emigrant aristocrats and their friends.Mme. de Staël was herself attacked with some virulence, and had to leave the country. Talleyrand decided to remain for the present at Hamburg.
There was a lively and interesting company at that time at Hamburg, and Talleyrand met many old friends. He tells us in the memoirs, with that tinge of malice that at times borders on ill-nature, that Madame de Flahaut, who was there, sent out a note to the ship before he landed, asking him to return to America. Her husband, Count Flahaut, had been guillotined during the Revolution, and his widow had met at Hamburg, and was about to marry, the Portuguese Minister, the Marquis de Souza. She felt that the presence of Talleyrand might lead to embarrassment. But Talleyrand was not heroic enough to face the ocean and America again in her matrimonial service. Another interesting friend he found at Hamburg was Mme. de Genlis. He found so little change in her that, unconscious of its application to others, he is tempted to pen an aphorism: “The fixity of compound natures is due to their suppleness.” His former Secretary of Embassy at London, and later friend and colleague, Reinhard, was there, and they increased their attachment during those months of waiting. His former chief, General Dumouriez, had fled there. Besides the French emigrants of all parties, there was also a group of Irish rebels, led by Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Apart from the anxiety and inactivity, the time would pass pleasantly.
In May the elections for the Chambers strengthened the moderate element at Paris, and it became once more habitable. But Talleyrand took his time in returning. From Hamburg he went in the summer to Amsterdam, and in a fortnight passed on to Brussels, where he remained for a month or two. The story of his going to Berlin for three months on a secret mission seems to be apocryphal. In September he re-entered Paris.
We are left to imagine the feelings with which he contemplated the regenerated capital of the Republic. He had last lived there in 1792, when equality and fraternity were expressing themselves with such ungraceful logic. The Revolution was now spent. Equality and fraternity were forgotten; liberty was construed in a sense that made even the liberal shudder. The Paris that had issued from the womb of the Revolution, with such fangs as of a giant offspring, was a grotesque abortion. The poor were as poor as ever, as despised as ever, as much preyed on by parasites as ever. But the new class that filled the theatres and the larger houses was insufferable. An epidemic of speculation had set in. Brokers and bankers met you at every corner, and shrill females assailed you in the streets with bundles of notes. The paper-money of the successive authorities and the confiscation of ecclesiastical and emigrant property had led to these spectacles. Some won the prizes, and, if they succeeded in carrying their money beyond the “camp of Tartars” at the PalaisEgalité, bought emigrant hotels and entered “Society”—a society such as the world has rarely seen. The frequent mention of freedom during the last few years had led to a study of the life of the “free peoples of antiquity,” which rested on slavery. Sonorous Greek and Latin names decorated the new generation. Greek and Roman garments hung about their slim Parisian persons. The men got the idea that thehetairæwere the chief feature of classic life: and the women thought it was the use of transparent dress—though it is gratifying to learn that some of them were hooted when they attempted to walk the Bois in this costume. Wealthy brokers built Roman homes, not forgetting the fish ponds, for theiramies. The journals announced as many divorces as marriages. What with war and guillotine and pike the multiplication of patriots had become urgently necessary, and the only qualification for fraternity was patriotism; they had long before anticipated Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, and proposed to supply such as the Abbé Fauchet with a harem of twenty healthycitoyennes. Actresses and adventuresses and ex-nuns were fought for by men who had made fortunes on flour or paper-money, or emigrant property, and clothed with the wardrobes of dead princesses, and reopened the salons of the old regime; the furniture, decorations, and social forms not a little confused. At table they ate and drank much, and talked little. Balls, especially fancy dress balls, were held daily, transparent trousers and the light costume of heathen goddesses notbeing prohibited in an age of liberty. Churches and convents had been turned into restaurants and dancing-rooms for the most part.
When Chateaubriand returned to Paris a few years later (and it had improved a little), he said that he felt as if he was going into the mouth of hell. On different grounds Talleyrand may have said much the same. His moral ideal was taste. License without refinement he felt to be immoral. He had, too, a deep sense of humour and of humanity. The one was inflamed at every turn; the other was afflicted at the spectacle of this pitiful issue of all the sacrifices of the last six years. As usual, he looked about for stray consolations, and awaited developments. At the “Constitutional Club” he met whatever liberal, decent men there were left in Paris. He was, indeed, welcomed by the new queens of the salons, as Lytton assures us. In the revenge of time a “grand seigneur” of the old regime had come to be regarded as a superior being once more. A few with titles and empty purses in their pockets, were still living at, or had returned to Paris; they made excellentmaitres d’hotel. Talleyrand, with his high reputation for wit, culture and laxity, was regarded as aci-devantworth cultivating. Only occasionally, if reports may be trusted, did he express himself. One story goes that a lady of the transparent trousers order once invited him to her house, and donned her classic garments for the occasion. On the following day, when she had a numerous company, abox arrived from Talleyrand, containing “a costume for Madame.” She opened it before her jealous friends with great eagerness. It contained a fig-leaf. On the other hand Talleyrand was made a member of the Institut, the founding of which he had advocated in 1791. He read two papers there with his usual success. The first dealt with the commercial relations of England with the United States; the second pointed out the advantages to be derived from the new colonies. Talleyrand believed in the virtue of colonial work for the regeneration of an enfeebled or overcrowded nation. He was, he says, preparing a third paper on the influence of society in France, but was dissuaded from giving it. He would hardly venture to touch such a subject at that time, but it is a pity he has not left us the paper.
With that disregard for mere truthfulness in small matters which we notice throughout the memoirs (when there is a motive), he tells us that he kept aloof from politics, and only yielded after some refusals to the solicitations of Mme. de Staël. We know perfectly well that he was at the end of his purse, and was, if for no other reason, compelled to seek public service. He wrote to Mme. de Staël that he had only the means of subsistence for another month, and he would “blow his brains out if she did not find him a place.” He had then been in Paris more than six months, and saw no opening. Michaud says that he had left what little money remained to him (50,000 francs) in a bank atHamburg. Castellane tells a curious story of his having left his silver in charge of a number of market-women when he left France, and says that he collected every bit of it when he returned in 1796. But he had now an establishment to keep up. The diplomatist had been smitten at last by an unexpected type of woman. When Madame Grand first met him, or first lived with him, it is quite impossible to determine. The more plausible authorities are contradictory, and the lady’s career has been as thickly encrusted with romance as that of Talleyrand. Her nationality is doubtful. Her father is generally believed to have been an Englishman, though some speak of him as a Dutch sailor, and others as a Breton. She was born in India, and her mother is said to have been a native. She was married, when young, to a Swiss, M. Grand, but he had divorced her when she had captivated no less a person than Sir Philip Francis. When Sir Philip returned to England, she came to Paris, and for some years we trace her indistinctly flitting between Paris, London and Hamburg. It may have been at Hamburg, but her German biographer thinks it was more probably at Paris, in 1797, that she met and captured Talleyrand.
Three points about her are clearly established. She was very beautiful—“the beauty of two centuries,” one enthusiast says—not at all cultured, and very far from puritanical. Her lithe, graceful figure, pure white forehead, wide-opened, tender blue eyes, with long, dark lashes, and especially her long, soft, golden-brown hair—“the most wonderful hair in Europe”—are described by contemporaries with some warmth. The obvious strain of Indian blood in her complexion and bearing increased the charm, and her intellectual deficiency was not accentuated by any attempt to conceal it. She seems to have been devoted to her distinguished protector, and although she later admitted a Spanish prince to a share in her affection, she always spoke of him with great admiration. Talleyrand must have loved her in return. It is true that he only married her under compulsion from Napoleon, but most of his biographers quite wrongly suppose that he was, from the ecclesiastical point of view,everfree to marry. They lived together, affectionately and faithfully, as far as one can tell, until—twelve years later—the Princess Talleyrand was infatuated by the Prince of Spain. Talleyrand explains his choice of a woman without culture on the ground that “a woman of intelligence often compromises her husband; without it, she can only compromise herself.” The truth seems to be that there was no calculation whatever in the match. The plain phrase, he fell in love with her, accurately describes what happened. A man of exceptional mental power often finds the ablest of his female contemporaries, with their strain and effort to reach his level, impossible companions; moreover, Talleyrand was a deeply amorous and uxorious man. When friends had pointed out to him that his actress-friend at Saint Sulpice was without mental gifts, he said he had not noticed it. Mme. de Flahaut—for whom,however, one can only admit a qualified attachment—had kept almost the only non-political house in Paris before the Revolution.
From an engraving, after a picture by F. Gérard.MADAME TALLEYRAND.
From an engraving, after a picture by F. Gérard.
MADAME TALLEYRAND.
It was now more needful than ever to secure an appointment.27Mme. de Staël lent Talleyrand 24,000 francs, and promised to use her influence on the Directorate. Lytton connects Talleyrand’s appointment with the reading of his papers at the Institut. Two of the Directors, Rewbell and Reveillère belonged to it, and possibly heard his second paper on July 13th. These were the most decent members of the group of five which then ruled France, and it is natural that they should appreciate Talleyrand’s worth to the country. But Mme. de Staël won over the most important of the five, Barras, and induced him to invite Talleyrand to dine at his house at Suresnes. The other four lived with their families in a modest and respectable fashion under the eyes of the people at the Luxembourg. Barras, an aristocrat by birth, but coarse, violent, and sensual, made a good deal of money by secret commissions, and kept a lively establishment at Suresnes, besides the apartments at the Luxembourg where Mme. Tallien presided. An accident afforded a good opportunity to Talleyrand. Whilst he waited at Barras’ house the latter’s aide-de-camp, a youth to whom he was greatly attached, was drowned in the river, andit fell to Talleyrand to console the very distressed Director. He made a useful impression on Barras; in fact that functionary some time later paid him the awkward compliment of saying that his ways “would sweeten a dung-hill.” There was a change in the Ministry soon afterwards, and Barras warmly presented Talleyrand for foreign affairs. Rewbell and Reveillère supported him. Carnot opposed everything that Barras proposed, and Barthélemy followed Carnot. But the three carried the nomination. That night at ten o’clock Talleyrand was called out of the Salon des Étrangers by a gens-d’arme. He brought an official notification signed by Carnot. Talleyrand foolishly wastes a paragraph or two in explaining several reasons why he felt bound to accept. One would like him better it he had devoted them to a grateful acknowledgment of the help given him by Mme. de Staël. But she seems to have bored him a good deal, and in any case they had separated before these pages were written. “She has only one defect,” he once said: “She is insufferable.”
Thus did Talleyrand enter upon the second stage of his diplomatic career. From his professional point of view the situation was superb. France was still at war with the world, but the success of Napoleon was gradually bringing matters to the point where diplomacy begins. There was the prospect of a long series of treaties. Talleyrand was, as ever, ardently desirous of peace; he wrote to Madame de Staël with thatassurance.28Unfortunately, his chiefs were very meddlesome, very quarrelsome, and not very competent. They “had been chosen in anger, and had not transcendent ability,” says Mme. de Staël. Barras, a violent ex-soldier, with a good judgment and some penetration, was a Dantonist, and of loose and luxurious life. Carnot, the second strong man, detested Barras on both counts. He was a Robespierrean, a man of strict conduct, shrewd but narrow. Rewbell, a moderate, a lawyer of ability and integrity, but rather gruff, detested both Carnot and Barras and their traditions. Reveillère, honest and peaceful, tried to mediate. Barthélemy, ex-abbé, supported Carnot. Their deliberations were lively. At the first meeting of the Directorate that Talleyrand attended Carnot, raising his hand, swore that some accusation of Barras’ was untrue. “Don’t raise your hand,” shouted Barras; “it would drip with blood.” “These are the men,” says Talleyrand, “with whom I was to work to reintroduce France into European society.” He would not even see the good points of his colleagues of the Institut. Reveillère was a supporter of the new “Theophilanthropists”—“a gang of thieves,” says Talleyrand, with bitter levity. The Theophilanthropists correspond to what are now called “Ethical Societies.” They hired halls, in which they had moral discourses and lectures on philosophy, with singing of undogmatic hymns.
With the very few churches left active in Paris, they formed the only sobering influence. But Talleyrand had, by the time he wrote his memoirs, lost all admiration of the philosophic morality he had so much appreciated in his speech on education.
Moreover, the Directors left their Ministers no initiative. Talleyrand says he had little to do except sign documents drawn up by them and give passports. On one occasion Rewbell compelled him to re-write the instructions he was sending to envoys. The romantic biographers describe another occasion when, they say, Barras threw an ink-pot at him. Representatives abroad complained that France had no policy. The Directors were too slavishly influenced by their emissaries, and each of them had his own plan. There was, too, the eternal scarcity of money. At the Department the salaries of most of the officials were in arrears. At his official residence he would have us believe that the servants were dining off Sèvres dishes because they could not afford to buy earthenware.
The difficulty increased rapidly. There was still great distress in the country, and plots against the Directory were continual; one writer says there was an average of one per day. Six weeks after Talleyrand’s nomination a crisis occurred, and his conduct during it has been severely censured. The relaxation of the more violent measures had encouraged the royalists and other malcontents to act more vigorously. Evidence reached the Directors (partly from Napoleon) of apowerful and far-reaching conspiracy against them. At the head of it was the royalist General Pichegru, who was believed to have a following of 180 deputies. The Clichy Club at Paris had become a notorious rallying-place for malcontents, and Director Carnot was patronising it in a very compromising way. On the other hand, the Constitutional Club—with Talleyrand and Constant and Mme. de Staël—could naturally be relied on to oppose a counter-revolution, little as it respected the Directorate. Napoleon, too, made it clear that his assistance could be had.
It is, however, in complete opposition to the evidence, that Lytton accuses Talleyrand of taking the initiative; and still worse is Michaud’s reckless statement that Talleyrand “arranged everything.” A sober inquiry into thecoup d’étatof Fructidor only discovers that Talleyrand supported it in advance, but was not implicated in the violent manner of its execution, which, indeed, he used his influence to moderate. On the information supplied to the Directors no legal action could be taken. Reveillère, whose life was threatened, then conceived the idea of acting by force, though without unnecessary severity. He approached Rewbell, who consented, and the two easily induced Barras to join. It is absurd to suppose that these officials, who hampered Talleyrand in his own department and kept him in habitual ignorance of other affairs, should do more than secure his support as a Constitutionalist. Napoleon was requested to send troops, and to thesehe added as general the excitable and meddlesome Augereau, who soon had his men quartered within striking distance. The Clichy Clubbites meantime grew more audacious, and on September 3rd they warmly cheered a proposal in the Chamber to destroy the executive. That night the streets of Paris rang with the unfamiliar tread of an army, a token to all that an unconstitutional act was afoot. The next morning the two Councils found themselves surrounded by 10,000 troops. Pichegru and 42 of his followers in the Five Hundred, Barbé-Mabois and eleven of the Ancients, and 148 other alleged conspirators, especially journalists, were arrested. The Directors had warned Carnot and Barthélemy, whom they had no wish to injure personally. Carnot, who had long toyed with the Opposition, and had resisted every friendly overture, now fled. Barthélemy was arrested. Merlin de Douai, a lawyer, and Francois de Neufchateau, a literary man, took the places of Carnot and Barthélemy. The new Directorate obtained extensive powers from the newly-constituted Councils, revived the old stringent decrees against emigrants and priests, and initiated a long series of deportations. They sent 65 of the worst conspirators to Guiana—the guillotine would have been more merciful—and the rest to the Isle of Oléron. In all some 10,000 Nonconformist priests and returned royalists were prescribed, but only a proportion of these were actually banished. There was another general flight to the frontier.