VIII
On quitting England, he quitted not only diplomacy, as I have said, but public life, and passed the remainder of his days in the enjoyment of the highest situation, and the most agreeable and cultivated society, that his country could afford.
His fortune and ability might now, according to the Grecian sage, be estimated; for his career was closed; and, as the old sought his saloon as the hearth on which their brighter recollections could be revived, so the young were glad to test their opinions by the experience of “the politic man,” who had passed through so many vicissitudes, and walked with a careless and haughty ease over the ruins of so many governments, at the fall of which he had assisted. He himself, with that cool presence of mind for which he was so remarkable, aware that he had but a few years between the grave and himself, employed them in one of his great and constant objects, that of prepossessing the age about to succeed him in his favour, and explaining to those whom he thought likely to influence the coming generation, the darker passages of his brilliant career. To one distinguished person, M. Montalivet, who related to me the fact, he once said: “You have a prejudice against me, because your father was an Imperialist, and you think I deserted the Emperor. I have never kept fealty to any one longer than he has himself been obedient to common sense. But, if you judge all my actions by this rule, you will find that I have been eminently consistent; and where is there so degraded a human being, or so bad a citizen, as to submit his intelligence, or sacrifice his country, to any individual, however born, or however endowed?”
This, indeed, in a few words, was M. de Talleyrand’s theory; a theory which has formed the school, that without strictly adhering to the principle that common sense should be the test of obedience, bows to every authority with a smile and shrug of the shoulders, and the well-known phrase of “La France avant tout.”
Shortly previous to his last illness he appeared (evidently with the intention of bidding the world a sort of dignified adieu) in the tribune of the Institute. The subject which he chose for his essay was M. Reinhard, who had long served under him, and was just dead, and between whom and himself, even in the circumstance of their both having received an ecclesiastical education, there was some sort of resemblance. The discourse is interesting on this ground, and also as a review of the different branches of the diplomatic service, and the duties attached to each—forming a kind of legacy to that profession of which the speaker had so long been the ornament.