On the other hand, Napoleon would take care to attach to his person and cause a minister of the ability of Talleyrand. To the end of his career he acknowledged that Talleyrand had no equal in his work, and their letters show that “foreign ministry” was taken in a wide sense. Talleyrand could entertain returned nobles who despised the thin polish of the Tuileries, as well as play with a St. Julien, or conciliate Swiss and Italian patriots. To one letter Talleyrand appends a list of the ladies at his last soirée who did not dance. When the Spanish princes came to Paris, it was Talleyrand’s fête at Neuilly that remained in their memories; it was at Neuilly they met the old nobility and culture of France, and enjoyed the most brilliant display of Parisian decorative art. When Napoleon wanted to have himself appointed President of the Italian Republic it was Talleyrand he sent to meet the 450 stern Italian patriots at Lyons, who would not venture nearer into the mesmeric circle of the Tuileries. Talleyrand describes the state of the roads, the price of bread and the feeling of the provincials, as he travels; selects his friend Melzi among the deputies to “open his heart to”; puts before them in his grave, sententious way “not what Napoleon desired, but what it was expedient for the Cisalpine Republic to ask.”[33] When Napoleon and Josephine arrived, it was almost superfluous to awe the Italians with reviews and parades. The Constitution was accepted, and the Italian branch of Napoleon’s empire created. When, in the summer of 1801, Spain made its “orange-war” on Portugal, instead of subjugating it as Napoleon had demanded, the First Consul sent the whole of the papers to Talleyrand who was at the baths of Bourbon l’Archambault. “I fear my advice has a smack of the douche and cold bath about it,” says Talleyrand in reply; but his moderate and judicious scheme saved the angry Napoleon from a serious blunder. The news of Spain’s interested failure to close Portugal against England had come to Napoleon in the midst of his negotiation for peace with London, and he talked of making war on Spain. Talleyrand urged the more refined punishment of disposing of Trinidad to England, sending Lucien (the Madrid ambassador) on a long visit to Cadiz, and of generally “wasting time at Madrid and pushing things on at London.” [Illustration: TALLEYRAND (Under Napoleon).]