“It is needless to say that the story of his removal from office was a hoax. The prince, in rising to reach the light from the chimney, had descried, in the looking glass, the shadow of a figure on the opposite wall. His quick perceptions enabled him at once to guess to whom it belonged, from remembrance of the mayor’s uneasy curiosity, and indiscreet listening to all that passed during dinner, and he felt determined to punish the mean and cowardly listener. A wink at the count was sufficient; _he_ was not one to refuse a hint, and together they thus fooled the victim to their heart’s content. The story got abroad, and created great laughter throughout the whole country, and, as might be expected, the little Mayor of C. was ere long caricatured, pamphleted, and paragraphed into resigning, and it was only then that he was allowed to live in peace, and to forget his fatal visit to Valençay.” As my friend concluded his story, the whist-table broke up, and the prince rising, moved towards the fire, where we were seated, and took the arm-chair which was always reserved for him. I must confess that at that identical moment I could enter into the feelings of the worthy Mayor of C., for I, too, longed for the moment when he would expand, and share with us some of the varied riches of anecdote with which his mind was stored. It needed but a single spark to fire the train: the prince was _en verve_ that evening, and I verily believe a whole volume might be filled with the bare leaves and cuttings of the “Flowers of Rhetoric,” with which he charmed us. If he did not possess, like the antique poet of Dante’s vision, the power of carrying us into the nether regions, his charm was greater still; for with a beck he conjured up the shadows he wished us to behold, and made them pass in long array before us. One or two of the anecdotes I will relate, for the benefit of my readers, but they must not expect to find one jot of the _manner_ of the narrator—the piquancy, the _verve_, the irresistible charm which made the Prince de Talleyrand avowedly the first story-teller of his day. If I can give but a faint idea of the style of conversation which enlivened the long evenings of autumn beneath the princely domes of Valençay, it will be as much as I can hope to accomplish, for the very warmth and vivacity of the prince’s manner of relating renders it impossible to repeat his words, and memory fails to retrace the fairy chain by which imagination was so sportively held captive and enthralled.