Название: Talleyrand: A Biographical Study
Автор: Joseph McCabe
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066249342
isbn:
From an engraving, after a picture by Retsch.
MADAME DE GENLIS.
Conversation would not lack variety or brilliance amongst such a group. Talleyrand’s assemblies began to be talked about. He was invited “more or less everywhere,” and went. He was already sufficiently detached from the idea of partisanship to find his way about amongst the conflicting salons. The houses of twenty noble dames were the centre for as many parties—of the King, of the Queen, of d’Artois, of the Duc d’Orléans, of Turgot, and Choiseul, and Necker, and de Rohan, and de Brienne, and so on. Talleyrand overlooked their political differences, except for a tactical opposition to Necker, and enjoyed their graceful friendship and influence. He went to the Palais Royal, where the Duc de Chartres (later d’Orléans, and finally Egalité) was wearing out his useless life—“his vices,” says Talleyrand, in one of those phrases that were gaining him respect, or at least neutrality, “his vices knew no bounds but the limit of his imagination and that of those about him.” Those about him had not infertile imaginations. Talleyrand was taken by Archbishops Dillon, de Brienne, and Cicé, to the house of Mme. de Montesson (secretly married to the Duc d’Orléans), and was granted a seat in the box reserved for “more or less dissipated clerics” (his own phrase) in the private opera-house where Madame and the Duke and other noble amateurs performed. He found her house “at the furthest limit of decency, but very pleasant.” It is the only place at which he speaks of meeting his spiritual leaders. Loménie de Brienne had been proposed to the King for the archbishopric of Paris. “But surely,” said Louis, “the archbishop of Paris should be a man who believes in God.” It did not seem to matter at Toulouse. He went also to the Hotel de Rohan, where the adventurer, Cagliostro, with the olive complexion and brilliant eyes, was exhibiting the devil to people who did not believe in God. At Mme. de Montesson’s he one early day made a feeble joke to the Duchess de Gramont, the sister of Choiseul, and several doors were immediately opened to him. Once a week he took his own brilliant group to dinner at the house of Mme. d’Héricourt. The Swedish minister instituted another day for them, but the dinner was killed by forcing the talkers to listen to long readings—the craze of the hour. Another house he visited, at Auteuil, was that of the Countess de Boufflers-Rouvrel; and at the house of her next-door neighbour, Mme. Helvétius, he would find Chamfort at home, with the Abbé Sieyès, the later constitution maker, and Cabanis, the materialist.
The only house which he visited with any particular freedom, besides that of his mother and that of Mme. de Genlis, was that of the Countess de Flahaut, at the Louvre. Governor Morris, the American Envoy, affirms that he found Talleyrand helping to give her a foot-bath there one morning. Her son, born in 1785, was pretty generally accredited to Talleyrand, but in an age of myths and scandals exact determination is as difficult as it is superfluous.
He shared the celebrated dinners of Mme. de Reynière, saw the deistic Abbé Delille dine with the Queen at Mme. de Polignac’s, and went to “learned and tiresome concerts” at Mme. Lebrun’s (the artist), M. d’Albaret’s, and the Count de la Rochechouart’s.
It must not be supposed that he was merely tolerated in these circles. He was sought and esteemed. It is said that he was generally one of the last to enter a salon, limping slightly, faultlessly dressed in blue coat and white vest and chamois breeches (unless it were advisable to remember the soutane), and there was an appreciable movement towards him. His biting wit and quick repartee soon forced people to reckon with him. One never knew when his deep, deliberate voice would break in with effect. “I don’t know why people don’t like me,” one man was saying; “I have only done one wrong thing in my life.” “When will it be over?” asked Talleyrand. “Sieyès is deep,” said another to him. “You mean hollow,” he at once replied. A lady once asked him, in a period of difficulty, how his affairs were going. One version has it that she asked how his legs were. “As you see, madame,” he suavely answered. The lady squinted. His liberal ideas were, of course, an advantage. “He dresses like a fop, thinks like a deist, and preaches like an angel,” said someone; СКАЧАТЬ