Three points about her are clearly established. She was very beautiful—“the beauty of two centuries,” one enthusiast says—not at all cultured, and very far from puritanical. Her lithe, graceful figure, pure white forehead, wide-opened, tender blue eyes, with long, dark lashes, and especially her long, soft, golden-brown hair —“the most wonderful hair in Europe”—are described by contemporaries with some warmth. The obvious strain of Indian blood in her complexion and bearing increased the charm, and her intellectual deficiency was not accentuated by any attempt to conceal it. She seems to have been devoted to her distinguished protector, and although she later admitted a Spanish prince to a share in her affection, she always spoke of him with great admiration. Talleyrand must have loved her in return. It is true that he only married her under compulsion from Napoleon, but most of his biographers quite wrongly suppose that he was, from the ecclesiastical point of view, _ever_ free to marry. They lived together, affectionately and faithfully, as far as one can tell, until—twelve years later—the Princess Talleyrand was infatuated by the Prince of Spain. Talleyrand explains his choice of a woman without culture on the ground that “a woman of intelligence often compromises her husband; without it, she can only compromise herself.” The truth seems to be that there was no calculation whatever in the match. The plain phrase, he fell in love with her, accurately describes what happened. A man of exceptional mental power often finds the ablest of his female contemporaries, with their strain and effort to reach his level, impossible companions; moreover, Talleyrand was a deeply amorous and uxorious man. When friends had pointed out to him that his actress-friend at Saint Sulpice was without mental gifts, he said he had not noticed it. Mme. de Flahaut—for whom, however, one can only admit a qualified attachment—had kept almost the only non-political house in Paris before the Revolution. [Illustration: _From an engraving, after a picture by F. Gérard._ MADAME TALLEYRAND.]