March 9th, 1830
Dined with M. de Flahault; met M. de Talleyrand, Madame de Dino, General Sébastiani, M. Bertin de Vaux, Duc de Broglie, and Montrond. Sébastiani and Bertin de Vaux are Deputies, and all violent Oppositionists. After dinner M. de Lescure, another man, and the young Duc de Valençay, Madame de Dino’s son, came in. They talked politics all the time, and it was curious enough to me. Bertin is the sort of man in appearance that Tierney was, and shrewd like him; he is brother to the editor, and principal manager himself, of the ‘Journal des Débats.’ Sébastiani is slow and pompous. The Duc de Broglie is one of the best men in France. They all agreed that the Government cannot stand. Talleyrand is as much against it as any of them. Sébastiani told me they should have 280 against 130. Talleyrand said that it was quite impossible to predict what might be the result of this contest (if the Court pushed matters to extremity) both to France and Europe, and that it was astonishing surrounding nations, and particularly England, did not see how deeply they were interested in the event. He said of us, ‘Vous avez plus d’argent que de crédit.’ He looks horridly old, but seems vigorous enough and alive to everything. After dinner they all put their heads together and chattered politics as fast as they could. Madame de Flahault is more violent than her husband, and her house is the resort of all the Liberal party. Went afterwards to the Opera and saw Maret, the Duc de Bassano, a stupid elderly bourgeois-looking man, with two very pretty daughters. The battle is to begin in the Chamber on Saturday or Monday on the Address. Talleyrand told me that the next three weeks would be the most important of any period since the Restoration. It is in agitation to deprive him of his place of Grand Chambellan.