Whitworth, Lord, 225. Wieland, 264. Yarmouth, Lord, 237, 239. FOOTNOTES: [1] The date is variously given as February 2nd or 13th, and even March. The first seems to be correct. Dupanloup speaks of the Prince celebrating his eighty-fourth birthday on that date. But the myth-making faculty has been so busy with the life of Talleyrand that his very birthplace and parentage have been disputed. It will prepare the reader for the wild legends we shall encounter to learn at once that serious French writers have attributed Talleyrand’s lameness to a congenital defect or to an encounter with a savage sow, and that serious American writers (_Bookman_, September 26, 1901) have asked us to consider gravely a story of his having been born at Mount Desert, Maine, the illegitimate son of an American fisher-girl and a French naval officer. [2] Mr. Holland Rose (_Life of Napoleon_) is entirely wrong in speaking of his “resentment against his parents.” [3] I have already ignored scores of stories about Talleyrand’s youth. The biographer has to plunge beneath a mass of them to reach his true subject. A discharged secretary of his, who could imitate his signature, flooded Paris and London with fabricated letters and anecdotes, and he had many rivals in the business. Writers like Bastide, Pichot, Villemarest, Michaud, Stewartson, Touchard-Lafosse, and even Sainte-Beuve, readily admit these, and some of the best biographies contain a few that are inconsistent with known facts. Such are the stories of his chalking Voltairean verses on his uncle’s garden wall, and of (in the following year) scaling the walls of Saint Sulpice by night, seducing a whole family, and being imprisoned in the Bastille. The dates or other features betray these apocryphal legends. [4] Lady Blennerhassett and most biographers wrongly describe him as a priest. He was not ordained until four years later. The archives of the Sorbonne, in registering his application in April and June, 1775, speak of him as a sub-deacon. [5] On the strength of this absurd story historians like Professor Sloane inform their readers that Talleyrand “was a friend of the infamous Mme. du Barry, and owed his promotion to her.” So the legendary Talleyrand still lingers in serious literature. The story contains a gross anachronism, and the mere fact of the abbey being at Rheims points at once to the influence of Archbishop Talleyrand having obtained it for his nephew. [6] I speak throughout the work of livres (=francs) unless I state otherwise. It is not true that, as is often said, the sum was invariable. [7] Talleyrand signs the minutes (from which I take my account) under this name, but he is described in the scrutiny of titles as a sub-deacon. The title _abbé_ was then given, not only to priests and _abbés commendataires_, but to many teachers and others who never took orders.