The last interview with Napoleon was tempestuous. In January (1814), a few days before he rejoined the army, the Emperor again chose a public occasion to abuse him, and threatened to punish him severely on the first complaint. “You are a coward, a traitor, a thief. You don’t even believe in God. You have betrayed and deceived everybody. You would sell your own father.” Talleyrand stood quietly by the fire; not a muscle of his face or body was seen to move. One of the witnesses told Lytton that he seemed to be the last person in the room interested in what the Emperor said. His critics enlarge here again on his “lack of self-respect.” There could not be a more perverse and malevolent interpretation of an admirable bearing. On this occasion, however, Talleyrand immediately wrote to the Emperor offering to resign his place on the Council. It was not accepted. Napoleon had told him some time before that if anything happened to himself he would see that Talleyrand did not survive him. Within a few months he used language which almost implied a regret that he had not had Talleyrand shot. They never saw each other again. In less than three months the Empire was at an end. In a private letter written immediately after this incident Talleyrand spoke of it with great moderation and sadness. His correspondent was the Duchess of Courland, who now appears, almost for the first time, in the story of his life. There is no other woman who has been addressed by him with such passionate and devoted language as this beautiful Russo-German princess. After the death of her husband in 1801 she lived chiefly at Mittau, but paid an occasional visit to Paris. It must have been during one of these visits that Talleyrand first met her. We do not know the year, but it cannot have been long before he sought the hand of her daughter for his nephew in 1808. She would then be in her forty-seventh year, and her daughter, Dorothy, in her fifteenth. The romanticists (strongly reinforced in this instance by the fertile imagination of George Sand) have, of course, given a sensual character to the attachment, and have thrown out ludicrous hints that Dorothy (born years before we have any reason to think he had met the duchess at all), who succeeded the mother in his affections, was his daughter. All this is pure wantonness. We can understand without their aid the ardent friendship that we find in 1814 between the refined statesman of sixty and the graceful and gracious lady of fifty-three. She was a woman of great charm, many accomplishments, high intelligence and character, and no mean political faculty. “No woman in the world was more worthy of adoration,” said Talleyrand long afterwards. The score of short letters he wrote her during 1814 are full of such expressions as “my angel.” CHAPTER XIV THE RESTORATION