“It is pleasant to listen to his quiet and even mirthful tales of the life he led when staying at the _succursale_ of the establishment, which was situated at Vaugirard, near which place (at Issy) the Duchess of Orleans, mother of our present King Louis Philippe, possessed a most splendid château. Here she used to assemble all the _élite_ of the society of Paris, and on the boards of the little theatre belonging to the château were first produced some of the dramatic pieces which afterwards had the greatest vogue in the capital. To be present at these representations was an honour, of course, far beyond the pretensions of the poor seminaristes, whose ears were tantalized during the long summer nights by the rattling of carriage-wheels, and the hallooing of livered attendants, as all the rank and beauty of Paris flew by the old gray convent, where the priestly inhabitants should have been slumbering in holy calm. But young Talleyrand slumbered not. He would remain gazing for hours through the narrow apertures of the jalousies,—which the watchful eye of the _surveillant_ caused always to be closed,—and, with straining eyes and yearning heart, seek to picture to his fancy the faces and the forms of the fair occupants of the carriages which passed in rapid succession, until the desire to join the happy groups he beheld thus fleeting before him became irresistible, and he resolved _coûte que coûte_ to gratify it. No sooner was the resolution formed than he hastened to its execution. “Accordingly, one bright balmy night in August, he flung his black serge frock _aux orties_, and, without assistance and without a confidant (he never asked or took advice), he climbed the old crumbling wall of the garden, and jumped up behind one of the gay carriages which had so excited his envy. He will sometimes smile even now at the self-confidence with which he planted himself, all terrified and blushing, however, at the heels of the party who alighted at the _perron_ of the château. He was fairly astonished at his own impudence, when he found himself comfortably seated in the parterre of the theatre, with an officer of the Gardes Françaises on one side, and a little masked and mincing _abbé petit-maître_ on the other; nor could he believe, as he raised his eyes and gazed around on that bright and brilliant company, that he was not in reality where he ought at that moment to have been, stretched on his lowly pallet, and dreaming of paradise.