“With Cerutti, Mirabeau, and the _Feuille Villageoise_, began for Talleyrand a new era, a fresh existence, outwardly, at least, for, after all, it was but the realization of the splendid dreams with which he had solaced his young ambition ever since that memorable day on which he had changed the dark blue broad cloth and bright buttons of the _joyeux collegien_ for the black serge soutane of the _séminariste_. I have often heard him declare, in his moments of _épanchement_, that, during the years of hardship and trial which followed the first brief triumph of the new ideas, while toiling for existence in America, or struggling to keep up a precarious position in Hamburg, he never once looked back with regret upon the splendour of his life as Bishop of Autun, surrounded by luxury and grandeur; he never murmured at the loss of wealth, the change of station; but what he should lament to the latest hour of existence is the decay of that _society_ in which he had been bred, which was lost in ’89 never to return, and which he, perhaps, by his peculiar tone of mind, was fitted more than any other man to enjoy. The events of ’89 divided his life into two epochs, so distinct, so far distant from each other, that it often seems to him, when looking back upon the past, that he has realized the old fable, and indeed lived and breathed during two separate periods, and enjoyed two lives, with all their individual hopes and fears, their several joys and sorrows, the triumphs and defeats peculiar to each. “I have been much struck with some few observations of his upon the charm of the intellectual existence which he had enjoyed before the breaking up of the old system; he scarcely ever reverts to the Revolution without bestowing a regret upon the moral intercourse which it destroyed. He was even then sadly aware that the great changes he desired so much must of necessity bring others which he dreaded even more. Even then he was sometimes led to doubt whether the good which had been gained could ever compensate for that which had been forfeited. So impressed was he with this idea, that he was like the traveller, who, having arrived at the summit of the mountain, up whose flowery path he has been climbing so gaily, turns back to throw one wistful glance upon the country which he has left behind, with a sad presentiment that he shall not behold the like again. When he is in good humour at Valençay, he loves to linger in memory on that time, and I have known him remain whole days, and even weeks, absorbed in the past, disdaining the present, as unworthy of a good man’s interest or a wise man’s concern. It is then that his conversation is most interesting; and, after having spent a few hours in listening to those anecdotes which with him seem to _couler de source_, one might almost be led to fancy that one has been holding communion with the dead.