Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was born at Paris in the year 1754; his maternal grandmother was the clever and witty Princess des Ursins, that eminent person who directed the councils of Philip V. of Spain, as her friend Madame de Maintenon governed the mind of Louis XIV. M. de Talleyrand, being the youngest of the family, was intended for holy orders, according to the custom of the nobility, who devoted themselves to the profession of arms, to the church, or the manor; an active life was necessary to men of family. There had always been a high prelate of the house of Talleyrand, and this ecclesiastical dignity was intended for the young Abbé of Périgord, who was accordingly sent at the age of fourteen to the seminary of Saint-Sulpice. One ought to have heard Talleyrand himself, in his hours of gaiety and unreserve, recount the pranks and first love-affair of the young abbé; his scaling the walls, his visits to the roof of the house,--all of them things little suitable to the serious profession for which he was intended by his family. I think that in reading his Memoirs in the year 1827-28, at which time he was out of favour, he made some concessions to the little philosophers of the eighteenth century, who surrounded him under the Restoration. His ecclesiastical studies were limited; he occupied himself but little with theology, but already very much with business. The situation of general agent for the clergy was given him by the custom of his family, which was a very lucrative appointment, for he might be considered as the _chargé d'affaires_ of that great body, and he exhibited great method and remarkable judgment in the skilful application of the revenues of the church, which amounted to above one hundred and thirty-six millions of livres. The clergy met in a chapter every year, and the Abbé de Talleyrand gave an account of their revenues, of the steps he had taken, and the duties he had performed with regard to the court; his reports are remarkably exact, with a clearness of style that is very uncommon.