I have no intention of enumerating the labours of M. de Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna, or the important acts in which he took a part. Still less do I intend to trace a portrait of that celebrated man. Apart from the consideration that such a task would entail infinite developments, M. de Talleyrand henceforth belongs to history; and history alone, with inflexible truth, can describe and make known one of the most historical personages of modern times. But, having been an eyewitness at that trying period of his often successful efforts at raising and reinstating the nation which he represented, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to record the vivid impression produced by his imperturbable calm, his attitude, and the whole of his personality. It has been said often, and with considerable truth, that at no period did Talleyrand appear more conspicuously great than at the moment of France’s disasters in 1814. I had seen him eight years previously as Minister of France, then all-powerful, and dictating his laws to the whole of Continental Europe. At Vienna, as the plenipotentiary of a vanquished people, he was the same man, and as absolutely confident of himself. There was the same noble dignity, perhaps with an additional shade of pride, the same confidence essential to the representative of a nation which though vanquished was necessary to the maintenance of the European equilibrium--of a nation which might gather strength from the very consciousness of her defeat. His demeanour was, in one word, the most eloquent expression of the grandeur of our country. In watching the look which adverse fortune had been unable to disturb, the impassiveness which nothing could disconcert, one could not but feel that this man had still behind him a strong and powerful nation. Just as his high renown, and the authority attached to his name and experience, made themselves felt in the deliberations of European politics, so did his noble manners, the manners of the grand seigneur, and his urbanity stamp his private receptions and his daily life with a character of gravity wholly in harmony with his diplomatic rôle. At no moment in Vienna did he deviate from the habits contracted in Paris and in the century that lay behind. Every morning while he was dressing, visitors were admitted, and often during the operation of shaving and attending to his hair by his valet, discussions of the utmost gravity, though in the guise of mere talk, were engaged in. I have frequently seen him in his drawing-room seated on a couch by the side of the beautiful Comtesse Edmond de Perigord, and surrounded by bearers of the most eminent political names, the ministers of the victorious Powers, who, standing, conversed with him, or rather listened, as to the lessons of a teacher. In our century, M, de Talleyrand is perhaps the only man who constantly obtained such a triumph.