“I have dwelt thus lengthily upon the childhood of the Prince de Talleyrand, because, in the events by which it was marked, you may find both cause and excuse for many things that took place in after years. Such had been his life at Louis le Grand. Now, at the Seminaire, he was thrown at once among a set of creatures of a far different stamp from the bold and independent beings he had left. His new companions were mostly, like himself sons of the poor _noblesse_; but, unlike himself, they were either the _younger_ or the _bastard_ sons. Not one of these had been deprived, as he had been, of his name and birthright, therefore none could have sympathy with all the bitterness that must have lain so heavy on his heart. Instead of the variety which gave such interest to his college life, and such constant food to his perceptive powers, he was surrounded in his new abode by beings all actuated by one single motive, and who had therefore been moulded by the same views into the same character. The sleepy dream of life at St. Sulpice centred wholly in ecclesiastical distinction and honour, and merely resolved itself into either riches or dignities, according to the temper of the dreamer. The ready wit, the lively perceptions of young Talleyrand, could not be appreciated in a community where hope was deadened, and imagination dulled, by the certainty that robbed the Future of the dim veil with which it is hidden from the great mass of mankind, and which, according to the morals of the period, rendered the after years of the younger son of the poor noble, or the bastard child of the rich one, as easily to be defined, and as easy to unravel as a record of the past. So must have thought that little congregation of the Seminaire of Saint Sulpice, who were gathered there in 1770, the year of the admission of Charles Maurice. But God had ordained it otherwise; and, could some few of the fortunes of those lads be told at this day, we should perhaps find as great diversity of adventure, and many a tale of interest as wild and fearful, as those which could be furnished by the youthful denizens of the Royal College of Louis le Grand at the same period. “However, it does not appear that the young candidate for church preferment was guilty, for a single moment, of deception, with regard to those who had thus fashioned out his destiny. He wore no mask of hypocrisy at that time certainly, made no false pretence of fasting or of penance; but openly and freely shared in all the amusements which were within his reach, perhaps buoyed up with the presentiment that the time was drawing nigh when the cowled monk and the stoled priest would be bound by no obligation to keep the vow which had been breathed from terror or necessity.