By this time the Bonapartes and the Beauharnais hated Talleyrand. He had never concealed his small estimate of Napoleon’s brothers. “Say what you like about my family,” said the Emperor with a laugh, when he asked Talleyrand to speak to Alexander about his want of an heir. He also warned him that Josephine knew he favoured a divorce. They and the Foreign Minister, and every other Napoleonist that had been made a butt of royalist wit, now joined in reporting to the Emperor, when he returned in January, the latest misdeeds of the Faubourg St. Germain. Talleyrand had written amiable letters to Napoleon in Spain. He had congratulated him on his victories (with, we must remember, the usual hope that they will be made a step to peace and the real good of Spain), and encouraged his political action in Paris. The Corps Legislatif was giving trouble, and Talleyrand agreed that it might be extinguished without tyranny. In a country like France it was only necessary to have sufficient popular representation to vote supplies. When, therefore, Napoleon heard of the satirical comments on his campaign and the friendship of Talleyrand and Fouché, he determined to strike. On the day following his return, when Talleyrand and the other Court dignitaries came before him, he opened the sluices of his Corsican oratory. “He became a sub-lieutenant once more,” says Meneval in recalling his language. In the general confusion Talleyrand alone stood “like a rock,” though the Emperor even threatened to strike him. To Napoleon’s brutal observation: “You did not tell me that the Duke of San Carlos was your wife’s lover,” he quietly retorted: “I did not think it redounded either to your Majesty’s honour or mine.” When the Duchess de Laval asked him afterwards why he did not knock Napoleon down with the tongs, he said he was “too lazy.” The only remark he made to those present, when the Emperor had exhausted himself and departed, was: “What a pity that such a great man had not a better education.” We are often asked at this juncture by Talleyrand’s biographers to deplore the lack of self-respect that he betrayed in _not_ seizing the tongs, or returning the torrent of rhetoric. If he had been a bishop the same writers would ask us to admire his superhuman fortitude. The general reader will probably prefer an intermediate attitude. The aphorism quoted by Lord Acton, that such conduct belongs to one who is either more or less than man, is pretty but absurd.