“M. de Talleyrand, grieved to see the false line of conduct into which the king was falling, but incapacitated from affording help, and moreover, assailed each day by some new vexation, took advantage of a short illness to withdraw for a while from court, in order to restore his health at the château of his niece, the Duchess de Dino, at Rochecotte, in Touraine, where he resolved to pass the ensuing winter. “Various have been the motives attributed to this retirement at Rochecotte. I am aware that many of the public papers have asserted, and other writers of graver stamp have repeated, that it was during this winter that the plan of attack against Charles X. was conceived and matured, between the _chefs_ of the liberal party and M. de Talleyrand, who, according to general belief, had engaged himself to lend them the aid of his counsel and high influence. “What gave some little colouring to these reports was the fact, that M. de Talleyrand reckoned among his most intimate friends some of the most violent members of the opposition, who, at the moment of the revolution of 1830, by the force of circumstances, found themselves at the head of the new code of things which they had so long and so ardently desired, and which, after all, was established without their direct influence, as will be proved by a bare recital of facts. Thus, M. de Talleyrand received into his daily intimacy General Sébastiani, the Duc de Broglie, M. Villemain, M. Bertin de Vaux, and M. Molé; all of whom, however, remained passive spectators of the struggle, until the moment when the chance turned in favour of the popular party. There was one man, however, who took an active part in the revolutionary movement, who had prepared and ordered its march by his attacks in the journal of which he was principal editor, and whom M. de Talleyrand encouraged and distinguished by most particular favour. It was, indeed, at Rochecotte, during the month of May, which Thiers spent there with M. de Talleyrand, that he conceived the plan of those terrific articles in the _National_, which every morning, like the battering ram of ancient warfare, laid in ruins the wretched bulwarks behind which the tottering monarchy thought itself secure.