He was accorded by State and Church the funeral of a prince. In the Church of the Assumption, where he was to be interred until the vault was ready at Valençay, an imposing ceremony was held, at which Europe was represented. Over the catafalque on which his worn frame lay was emblazoned by priestly hands the motto of his house: “Re que Diou”—I lived so high that God alone towered above me. It was his last triumph. The story-tellers close their version of his career with the statement that, as the cortége started some time after for the gates of Paris, to take the body to Valençay, and the driver called out the usual question: “Which barrier?” a deep voice replied from underneath the hearse: “La barrière de l’Enfer.” * * * * * That there are unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions in regard to Talleyrand’s career must be admitted: that his personality is obscure and enigmatic can no longer be maintained. The work of successive historians and biographers, which I have put together in succinct form in this study, has made him intelligible. When we set aside demonstrable myths and legends, and when we decline to entertain the vicious charges of his enemies that are unsupported by other testimony, we have a tolerably clear character and consistent career. We see a boy of many excellent qualities thrust into a school of hypocrisy, a youth of sensuous and amorous temper and sceptical views admitted into a Church that asks no serious questions, a sincere patriot serving a country that deliberately changes its rulers five times in the course of his life. The tortuousness is largely in the path marked out for him. A refined epicurean, but no sybarite, he set out with deliberate intent to enjoy life. It is no injustice to point out that he fell short in practice of ideals of personal and political asceticism that he never even respected in theory. A certain laxity of morals, a disposition to pass over in silence the misdeeds of those who employed him, a readiness to take money for service done, were parts or consequences of his map of life. He was no Stoic, and would be the last to expect us to strain his character into harmony with Stoic ideals.