There is very little of the “apologia” in the memoirs, and not much of the impulse that urged most of his contemporaries to cover reams of paper with their contradictory versions of history. He is usually content to let documents tell the story. But, though Talleyrand ignores most of the charges that were made against him, he naturally reviews history in a light that sets his own career in harmony. Lady Blennerhassett surmises that his chief object when he wrote in 1816 was to conciliate Louis XVIII, and prepare the way for a return to power. Lord Acton has expressed the same opinion. It is based on the dexterous presentation of the way in which he was forced into the Revolution, the brevity with which he dismisses the more offensive parts of his share in it, his explanation of Napoleon as a step towards the Restoration, and the fulness of his account of his share in the Restoration and the work at Vienna. But this theory has to struggle desperately with the fact that his precautions against the publications of the memoirs before the appointed time were absolute, and must have been sincere. Nothing would have been easier for a man like Talleyrand than to have secured an accidental disclosure or theft of his papers; and the fact that he used to read passages from them to a few of his friends does not further his supposed plan in the slightest degree. Ordinary conversation with them would do just as well. On the other hand, we can quite understand the air of progressive policy he gives to his career by merely assuming that he wished to make it appear consistent. A statesman who was convinced that monarchy was the best form of government for France, and who, nevertheless, took a purely rationalist and utilitarian view of monarchy, would deal just in that way with his share in the Revolution and the Napoleonic era. It was a minor comfort to the epicurean to leave a rounded version of his life to posterity.