IV
The most urgent foreign question was thus settled; but the permanent condition of internal affairs, though the temporary arrangement I have been describing established something like a principle in favour of a constitution, still depended on the arrangements that might finally be made with Louis XVIII.
M. de Talleyrand, exceedingly anxious on this subject, had sent M. de Liancourt to the King, in the hope that his Majesty would listen and speak to his messenger confidentially. It was true that M. de Talleyrand was warned that the Duc de Liancourt, who had belonged to the Revolution, would not be well received by the monarch of the Restoration, if a certain nobleman, M. de Blacas, was by his side. But the Prince de Benevent treated this idea du haut de sa grandeur.
What! the sovereign who owed him (M. de Talleyrand) his throne; who was at once indolent and ambitious; who knew nothing of the country in which he was to appear, a country in which he had no partisans who could guide him by their counsels or aid him by their influence, and in which were still the sovereigns with whom M. de Talleyrand had been the confederate—would decline to receive a man of the first respectability and the highest birth, universally beloved, because he had taken the same part that M. de Talleyrand himself had taken in the public affairs of former times, and this when the new sovereignty was to be founded on all parties and opinions, and have, moreover, a constitution for its basis; the thing was impossible. M. de Talleyrand replied to the person who gave him this warning—
“The King, you say, will look back on the past, but Nature has placed the eyes of men in the front of their heads, in order that they may look forward.”
Undoubtedly, the warning referred to seemed absurd, but it was correctly given. M. de Liancourt saw “the certain M. de Blacas,” but came back without having seen Louis XVIII.64
In sending the particular person he had selected to Louis XVIII., M. de Talleyrand had the idea of engaging the King at once with the party to which that person belonged, viz., the moderate men of the early Revolution: men who were, by opinion, in favour of constitutional monarchy, but who had been so mixed up with persons of all parties and opinions, as to know all and have friends amongst all. In such a party he saw a centre at which divergent lines might meet—a backbone, to which might be attached the scattered members of the great and varied society out of which a new government had to be constructed. The project was not a bad one, and it is probable that during the first days of an uncertain triumph it would have succeeded.
But the unexpected popularity of his family, the general acceptance of the “white cockade,” the reports of his brother and the ardent Royalists, which did not fail to reach him with suitable exaggerations, and the positive abdication of Napoleon, created a new phase in Louis’s affairs, and hesitating what to do, he determined on doing nothing till he arrived in France.
This was sufficient to show M. de Talleyrand, who did not subsequently forget M. de Blacas, that there would be a court circle in the new reign from which he should be excluded; that the King neither meant to confide in him nor to offend him; that a system was not to be formed; that if he did not break with the sovereign on whose head he had a few days previously placed a crown, he must compromise with that sovereign’s prejudices and favourites. There were not as yet sufficient motives for a rupture. Circumstances would shortly develop themselves, and give many opportunities for a decided course. In the meantime a policy of principle was to be sacrificed to a policy of dexterity.
Had he been consulted, he would certainly not have counselled Louis XVIII., who made a sort of triumphal entry into London on the 20th, to have said he owed his crown to the Prince Regent; putting aside the Emperor Alexander, who was still in Paris, and the Senate and the Assembly, which were the only constituted organs at that time of the nation’s wishes, and the only authority which the French army and the French people would so easily have obeyed. But he met his Majesty at Compiègne, where Louis had determined to stay three or four days before entering Paris and fixing his ultimate resolves. The meeting would have been curious to witness.
Both personages were perfect actors in their way, and each with a pretension to superiority, was determined not to be subalternised by the other. Louis had acted the part of king for some years with the more care and punctiliousness because he was only king in name. Talleyrand had been accustomed from his youth to the highest positions in society; in later years he had been admitted into the intimacy of sovereigns, and been treated by them, if not on a footing of equality, with the highest respect; and he had just disposed of the fortunes of France. The descendant of kings meant to impose the sovereign on his powerful subject at once, with the airs of royalty, for which he was famous. The bishop, noble, and diplomatist was prepared to encounter these airs with the respectful well-bred nonchalance of a man of the world, who knew his own value; and the natural but not obsequious deference of a great minister to a constitutional monarch. It is probable that neither said what he intended to say, or what contemporaries have said for them; but it is reported that Louis gave M. de Talleyrand to understand that, in remaining tranquil and contented until Providence had placed the crown on his head, he had played the proper part of the prince and the philosopher, acting with far more dignity and wisdom than the bustling men of action who had been occupied during this time with their own advancement.
On the other hand, when his Majesty, wishing perhaps to efface the impression of observations that were not altogether complimentary, spoke in admiration of M. de Talleyrand’s abilities, and asked him how he had contrived, first to overturn the Directory, and finally Bonaparte, M. de Talleyrand has the credit of having replied with a sort of naïveté which, when it suited him, he could well assume:
“Really, sire, I have done nothing for this: there is something inexplicable about me which brings ill luck on the governments that neglect me.”65
Finally, as to essentials, the King appears, without entering much into details, to have given M. de Talleyrand to understand that France would have a constitution, and M. de Talleyrand the administration of foreign affairs.
This was all that M. de Talleyrand now expected.
Nevertheless he tried, on a subsequent occasion, to persuade the legitimate monarch that his throne would acquire increased solidity by being accepted as the spontaneous gift of the nation.
A really great man in Louis’s place would probably have provoked a vote by universal suffrage; the mere fact of appealing to such a vote would have attained a universal assent, springing from a universal enthusiasm; and, in fact, such a vote for a king who had legitimacy in his favour would at the same time have renewed the vigour of the legitimist principle.
A very prudent man would not have run this risk; he would have made the most of the vote of the Senate, since it was given, and taken for granted that it was a vote in favour of his race as well as of himself.
A vain and proud man, however, could not so easily divest himself of a peculiar quality which only he possessed. Any man might be chosen king of the French, but Louis XVIII. alone could be the legitimate King of France. This hereditary right to the throne was a personal property. He had claimed it in exile: he was resolved to assert it in power, and when M. de Talleyrand was for continuing the argument, he cut him short, according to contemporaneous authorities, by observing with a courteous but somewhat cynical smile:
“You wish me to accept a constitution from you, and you don’t wish to accept a constitution from me. This is very natural; mais, mon cher M. de Talleyrand, alors moi je serai debout, et vous assis.”66