The panegyric of the French plenipotentiaries at the Congress is practically contained in their names; nevertheless, M. de Talleyrand, in particular, seemed to dominate that illustrious assembly by the charm of his mind and the ascendency of his genius. Always the same, he treated diplomacy as he treated it formerly in his drawing-room in Paris and at Neuilly. Yet, France’s _rôle_ was rendered not less difficult by the circumstances from without than by the confusion from within. Hedged, as it were, by numberless obstacles, the inevitable consequences of a new organisation, and of the little harmony such an organisation is likely to command, France was virtually incapable of showing any _virile disposition_. It was an open secret that such a display was beyond the power and beyond the will of her government. The great European states, the arbiters of the Congress, proceeded with a common accord of which hitherto there had been no instance in diplomatic annals. It seemed as if nothing could either break or detach a single link of the chain. Hence, the representatives of France were bound to make up, either by the resources of their genius or by talent of the first order, for the obstacles opposed to them by a quadruple alliance applying to the deliberations the whole weight of its actual importance and of its unassailable union. The force he could not look for from his government, M. de Talleyrand found in himself; for it is no exaggeration to say that the whole of the French mission at the Congress seemed personified in him, whatever may have been the merit of his colleagues and the consideration attached to their personality. With the marvellous intuition which was the particular dower of his intellect, and which seemed not only to foresee events but to dominate them, he soon recovered the position belonging to France. Admitted to the directing committee, composed of the four great Powers, he completely changed its ideas and its tendency. ‘I bring to you more than you possess, I bring to you the idea of “right.”’ He divided those Powers, hitherto so united; he, as it were, raised the spectre of a disproportionately aggrandised Russian weight on the rest of Europe, and the necessity of edging her back to the north. He caused Austria and England to share that conviction. Hence, Emperor Alexander, who under the influence and in the drawing-room of M. de Talleyrand had, six months previously, decided upon the restoration of the House of Bourbon, saw, not without annoyance, his projects stopped by the representative of a state which owed its existence to him. ‘Talleyrand enacts the part here of Louis XIV.’s minister,’ he said more than once with a show of bad humour.