It was not unnatural that as soon as Napoleon felt his conduct and person to be secretly assailed with witticisms and criticisms he should look to Talleyrand’s hotel for the chief source. There was so much in his melodramatic poses to make the hated Faubourg St. Germain smile. Baron von Gagern tells us of the keen rivalry to enter Talleyrand’s circle. Those who had the _entrée_ went there after the opera at night, and played whist or billiards until two or three in the morning. “It was,” says Lord Brougham, “a lesson and a study, as well as a marvel, to see him disconcert with a look of his keen eyes, or a motion of his chin, a whole piece of wordy talk.” When a rumour spread of the death of George III, a Parisian banker came rather impertinently to ask his opinion. “Well,” said Talleyrand, gravely, “some say he is dead and some say he is not. I may tell you in confidence that I don’t believe either.” On another occasion a general of no great culture turned up late for dinner, and began to explain that a “maudit pékin” had detained him. Talleyrand asked him what a _pékin_ was. He replied that it was a camp-phrase for “all that isn’t military.” “Oh! I see,” said Talleyrand. “Just as we call military all that is not civil.” Dulness was the deadly sin at the Hotel Galiffet. When a not very handsome Englishman was boring the company one day with a long description of the charms of his mother, Talleyrand broke in at the first gap: “It must have been your father, then, who was not very good-looking.” He talked little, as a rule. Sometimes he would sit for an hour without speaking, then make a short and brilliant shot, in his sepulchral voice, at something that had been said. When Chateaubriand, whom he very much despised, had published his “Les Martyrs,” a friend gave Talleyrand a very long account of the plot of the work, concluding with the remark that the heroes were “thrown to the beasts.” “Like the book,” said Talleyrand, bitterly. When another man observed to him that Fouché had a great contempt for humanity, he said: “Yes, he had studied himself very carefully.” Another had the imprudence to ask him what had passed at a Council he had attended. “Three hours,” said Talleyrand. When he heard that Sémonville, for whom he had little respect, was getting fat, he pretended to be mystified, and explained that he “did not see how it was to Sémonville’s interest to get stout.” It was of the same man that he afterwards said, when Sémonville had become a senator, and someone was urging that “there were at all events consciences in the Senate”; “Oh! yes. Sémonville alone has at least two.” There was hardly a prominent person in Paris who did not go about with one or two of these barbs in him. It is well to remember them when we read their comments on him in their memoirs. Sometimes the quips actually came to be applied to himself. A friend, rather a _roué_, met him one day, and complained that he felt “infernal pains” (_douleurs d’enfer_).