We have the usual conflict of evidence. We must at once distrust Napoleon’s later statements. The ex-Emperor would not take the trouble to “lie beautifully.” He forfeits all claim to be heard here when he goes on to say that Talleyrand urged him to murder the Spanish princes! I am just as ready to surrender Talleyrand’s statement that he “vehemently opposed” the expedition. In fact he also says: “Driven to death by the specious arguments of the Emperor, I advised him to occupy Catalonia until he should be able to conclude a maritime peace with England.” If we moderate the first few words, we probably have here the truth of the matter; though it is very possible that the sight of the incompetence of the royal family and the distress of Spain kept his mind in some vacillation as to the intervention of France. That he urged Napoleon to invade and annex Spain is a statement made by the Emperor’s admirers only after it had proved a fatal and dishonourable enterprise; that the Emperor needed any such urging on the part of Talleyrand is a perfectly ludicrous supposition. The most probable reading of the situation (as regards Spain) _before_ the troops cross the Pyrenees is that Talleyrand wavered between two motives—a keen perception of Spain’s evil plight on the one hand and of Napoleon’s ambition and nepotism on the other—and used vaguely approving language. The final action of Napoleon was determined by the course of events, and not submitted for his approval or disapproval. There is no ambiguity about Talleyrand’s attitude on that. He was at his new home at Valençay in Touraine, a large and beautiful chateau lying in an extensive park, when the Spanish royal carriage arrived. In its heavy medieval splendour, with its panels of gold and silver, its curtains of crimson silk, and its huge gilt wheels, it reminded him painfully of the arrested development of Spain. He received the two young princes and their uncle with some feeling, and then set out for Nantes to meet Napoleon. If we may trust the memoirs (I would not press the point), he told Napoleon very freely what he thought of his stratagem. “It is one thing to take crowns, another thing to steal them,” he claims to have said; and it is stated that he told the Emperor that many irregularities, such as mistresses, would be overlooked in a gentleman, but when he stooped to cheating at cards he forfeited the name. Napoleon went on to Paris, and Talleyrand returned to Valençay. The Emperor paid him 75,000 francs a year for the maintenance of the princes, but he seems to have treated them with real sympathy.