III
The seal which marks our destiny has usually been stamped on our childhood; and most men, as they look back to their early youth, can remember the accident, the book, the conversation, which gave that shape to their character which events have subsequently developed.
M. de Talleyrand was in infancy an exile from his home; the fortune of his parents did not correspond with their rank: his father,5 a soldier, was always at the court or the camp; his mother held a situation in the household at Versailles. To both a child was an incumbrance, and Maurice immediately at his birth was put out to nurse (as was indeed at that time frequently the custom) in the country, where, either by chance or neglect, he met with a fall which occasioned lameness. This infirmity, when the almost forgotten child at the age of twelve or thirteen was brought up to Paris for the purpose of receiving rather a tardy education, had become incurable; and by a conseil de famille, it was decided that the younger brother, the Comte d’Archambaud—subsequently known as one of the handsomest and most elegant of the courtiers of Louis XVI., and whom I can remember under the title of Duc de Périgord—(a title given by Louis XVIII.), should be considered the elder brother, and enter the army, whilst the elder son should be pronounced the younger son, and devoted to the clerical profession, into which the Périgords knew they had sufficient influence to procure his admission, notwithstanding the infirmity which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been a reason for excluding him from the service of the church. From this moment the boy—hitherto lively, idle, and reckless—became taciturn, studious, and calculating. His early propensities remained, for nature admits of no radical change; but they were coloured by disappointment, or combated by ambition. We see traces of gaiety in the companion who, though rarely smiling himself, could always elicit a laugh from others; we see traces of indolence in the statesman who, though always occupied, never did more than the necessity of the case exacted; we see traces of recklessness in the gambler and politician who, after a shrewd glance at the chances, was often disposed to risk his fortune, or his career, on a speculation for money or power: but the mind had been darkened and the heart hardened; and the youth who might easily and carelessly have accepted a prosperous fate, was ushered into the world with a determination to wrestle with an adverse one.
Nor did any paternal advice or maternal care regulate or soften the dispositions which were thus being formed. From the nurse in the country, the lame young Périgord—for Périgord was the name which at this time he bore—was transplanted to the “Collége d’Harcourt,” since called that of St. Louis. He entered it more ignorant, perhaps, than any boy of his years; but he soon gained its first prizes, and became one of its most distinguished scholars.
At the “Séminaire de St. Sulpice,” to which he was removed in 1770, his talent for disputation attracted attention, and even some of his compositions were long remembered and quoted by contemporaries. Whilst at the Sorbonne, where he subsequently completed his studies, this scion of one of the most illustrious French houses was often pointed out as a remarkably clever, silent, and profligate young man: who made no secret of his dislike to the profession that had been chosen for him, but was certain to arrive at its highest honours.
With such prospects and such dispositions, M. de Talleyrand entered, in 1773, the Gallican Church.