It is just four years from the date of this incident to Talleyrand’s last interview with Napoleon. Those four years are full of adventure and life for the Napoleonist writer, but they offer little material to the biographer of Talleyrand. Throughout them the scene is being prepared for the next act. Wellesley is slowly forcing his way towards the Pyrenees. The coalition against England is gradually being converted into the final coalition against Napoleon. Parisian society is falling into two definite groups, Napoleonists and people who whisper to each other that the Emperor has no guarantee of immortality—“passengers,” in the words which Metternich applies to Talleyrand and Fouché; “passengers who see the helm in the hands of a reckless pilot steering straight for the reefs, and are ready to seize the tiller as soon as the first shock knocks down the helmsman.” Talleyrand is still, it will be remembered, Vice-Grand Elector, and member of the Supreme Council. But after January, 1809, he has little influence on the fortunes of France, and is continually offending the Emperor. His personal relation to Napoleon is curious. Michaud says that on the morning after the storm of January 23rd, he was one of the first to appear at the levee, and observers could see no trace of the events of the previous day in his bearing. The Emperor himself said to Roederer a few days later that “his feelings towards Talleyrand were unchanged,” and he would “leave him his dignities,” but would not have him closely associated as Chamberlain. The last letter of Talleyrand to Napoleon that we have, dated April, 1809, is full of amiability and ostensible devotion. Three years later, when he loses nearly the whole of his fortune, he applies to the Emperor through Savary, and receives two million francs for his hotel. In that year Napoleon even wanted to recall him to the conduct of affairs. It seems as if the two men retained, below all their political differences and personal friction, a softening memory of their joint achievements. But their divergence in policy was too serious to admit further co-operation. Napoleon saw all his hated enemies in Paris gather about the Hotel Talleyrand, and set his spies upon it. Talleyrand saw the Emperor reel fatally towards the precipice.