At No. 75 Talleyrand resided as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Directory. Before entering political life, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord studied theology and took holy orders. His family would have placed him in the army, but for an accident of rather a frightful kind, which happened to him in his childhood. His nurse had put him down in a field, while she walked away in conversation with her lover, and during her absence the child under her care was attacked by a pig, which bit away part of one of the calves and of one of the feet of the future diplomatist. At the age of twenty-one young Talleyrand was named Abbé of St.-Denis in the diocese of Rheims. He led the dissipated life common among the young abbés of his day; but he cultivated the society of intellectual men, and was on friendly terms with Mirabeau, Buffon, and Voltaire. In 1780 he was appointed Agent-General of the French clergy: a lucrative post which placed him in relations with the Minister, M. de Calonne, from whom he acquired ideas on the subject of finance which enabled him to repair his shattered fortune. Leading at the same time a life of pleasure and of affairs, Talleyrand did not remain insensible to the changes that were taking place around him; and in a letter addressed to his friend, Choiseul Gouffier, ambassador at Constantinople, he showed himself an intelligent advocate of political reform. A separate administration for the provinces--provincial self-government, in fact--was one of the remedies he proposed. He declared war against all privileges, and ended his letter by observing that “at last the people must count for something.” In 1788, the year before the Revolution, Talleyrand was made Bishop of Autun, with an income of 80,000 francs. A member of the Assembly of Notables in the month of November in this year, he showed himself one of the warmest advocates of the new ideas, and became at this time the friend of Necker. The clergy of his diocese sent Talleyrand as deputy to the States-General of 1789. Here he ranged himself on the popular side, and voted for the union of the two privileged orders (nobility and clergy) with the Tiers États. He voted, too, for the suppression of tithes, and for the constitution of an executive with responsible ministers.