It was particularly to the earnest solicitations of Madame de Staël that Talleyrand owed his return, and we know that her influence was at that time very great. Chenier undertook the report, and a decree was passed revoking the rigorous measures that had been adopted in 1793 against the late Bishop of Autun; it was also declared that he had not emigrated. Talleyrand had at that time entirely left off the ecclesiastical habit, and appeared every where as a layman. He enjoyed in the world a great reputation for wit and talent; there was something noble in his countenance, without its being exactly striking; he carried his head remarkably well, and his hair fell in curls upon his shoulders. He was no longer a young man, still his reputation for gallantry and for agreeableness in society had procured for him a great ascendancy over some women of that period, in the midst of that most singular society in the time of Barras and the Directory, in which were jumbled together men of high rank, contractors, renowned characters, and courtesans. Talleyrand had brought with him Madame Grand, with whom he had become acquainted at Hamburg, and, by a whimsical contrast, it was said no woman ever was possessed of less sense or less intelligence. We know how many capital stories were told of her in the Fauxbourg St. Germain, of which even the republic was so much afraid. The reason is, that the spirit of good society possesses great influence at the time that a bad state of society prevails. Jests were uttered, and the most charming _naïvetés_ were attributed to Madame Talleyrand, of which that regarding _M. Denon and Robinson Crusoe_ is, perhaps, the most inimitable. As soon as he arrived in Paris, Talleyrand joined the Constitutional Club, which used to meet at the Hôtel de Salm. Many thinking people saw the republic was gradually coming to an end, it had then but very little root in France. It was no longer possible to maintain a feeble and violent democracy, which gave way to the most fantastic and extraordinary paroxysms in the public assembly; people returned to the system of the balance of power, and to the English ideas that the school of Mounier and Lally-Tollendal had been desirous of rendering prevalent in the Constituent Assembly, and that Talleyrand had been commissioned to represent in London, in his secret mission, in which, as I before observed, there was mingled some idea of a revolution like that of 1688.