[54] The determination to have Murat deposed and Naples restored to Ferdinand is one of the cardinal points. This was insisted on by Louis XVIII as a family accommodation. It was not less advisable for France generally. Murat was too near Elba, as the sequel showed. Yet an able French critic of Talleyrand, M. Ollivier (_Revue des Deux Mondes_, September 15th 1894), has so far strained, perverted and ignored the evidence as to say Talleyrand first corresponded with Murat, and got 1,250,000 francs from him, and _then_ turned against him and obtained several millions from Ferdinand. The blind hostility of Sainte Beuve is not yet extinct at Paris. Ollivier’s whole case is founded on Sainte Beuve’s “remarkable study” (a happy phrase!), Pasquier’s “judicious” memoirs and the wild charges of Savary, Chateaubriand and Napoleon. [55] It is also clear that presents more frequently took the form of cash then than they do now. Ambassadors of historic and wealthy families could afford the luxury of disdaining money. Talleyrand had not a franc of hereditary wealth; and his diplomatic pre-eminence entailed enormous expenditure. To-day no man of character or culture could be offered money. Talleyrand lived in an age of transition, and was a cynic. [56] Pasquier does not name her. Lady Blennerhassett thinks it was the Duchess of Dino. It is much more likely to have been the Duchess of Courland, her mother, as we find the daughter in touch with Talleyrand. The Duchy of Dino had been given to the Foreign Minister by Ferdinand IV, and he had assigned it to his nephew. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Talleyrand, by Joseph McCabe