“I have often myself seen him smile at the idea of any one attempting his biography, and, whenever by chance he found himself compelled to receive at Valençay any of the petty journalists, the stray collectors of _bon mots_ and epigrams for the _salons_ of Paris, I have beheld him take a malicious pleasure in mystifying their credulity by relations of the most extravagant adventures connected with himself, or with the great public men with whom he had come in contact. One of his keenest enjoyments consists in making me read, while he is at his toilet, these same anecdotes as they appear in the peculiar journal for which the poor _gobe-mouche_ has been catering. As I have said before, there is so much that is real, and so much that is false, mixed up with everything connected with the prince, that the historian who would seek to be veracious, finds himself completely baffled. On the other hand, the world of anecdote is our own. He is no niggard, in sooth, of his rich store of souvenirs, and loves to dispense them to his intimates with a bounteous hand. The mention of an obscure name, the raising of the simplest doubt, will draw forth, when he is in the vein, such ample fund of amusement, that many a thick, closely-printed volume might have been compiled from this source alone. “I remember that, one evening, by some unaccountable circumstance which I now forget, we were fated to spend the hours from dinner till bedtime alone. The ladies of the family had gone to do honour to the bridal of a rich vassal in the neighbourhood of the château, and had most especially recommended the prince to retire early, as he was labouring under severe cold on the chest. You will scarcely believe me when I tell you that we remained up together until daylight—so absorbed was he in the remembrance of events of years gone by, and of which some simple observation on my part had touched, as it were, the galvanic train, and roused the reminiscences which had slumbered perhaps since his youth, while I thought not of rest or sleep so long as he talked on. I could have listened until doomsday. One of the subjects on which he spoke that evening was the very one upon which I have just been entertaining you; that of his memoirs. There had been an advertisement in one of the Paris papers that morning announcing sketches of ‘the Arch-Diplomatist, from Original Documents.’ “‘This is about the fortieth attempt of the kind within the last dozen years,’ said he, in answer to my information of the circumstance, ‘and, what is more astonishing is the fact, as I am told, of their having all met with more or less success. The public love to be duped, and seek with eagerness every occasion to be deceived. It is the charlatans alone whose numbers fail, dupes are never wanting.’