As long as Talleyrand had only to treat with Lord Castlereagh and the Prussians, he preserved his ascendancy; but how hard were the conditions imposed by those powers! The Duke of Wellington had a regard for him as the old representative of the English alliance, and supported him with all his influence, which was very great; however, in the month of August 1815, the face of every thing was changed; the Russians joined with 350,000 bayonets; the Emperor Alexander took a part in the negotiation, and as Russia alone was kindly disposed towards the house of Bourbon, as she alone defended the integrity of our territory, and did not exact the sacrifices required by England and Prussia, she soon became the predominant power. The first condition imposed by the Emperor Alexander, before he would enter into any negotiation, was the dismissal of Prince Talleyrand. He has since pretended that he voluntarily retired from office to avoid signing the Convention of Paris, that hard necessity to which France was compelled to submit through the heavy calamities which had fallen upon her, but this fact is as untrue as his opposition to the Spanish war in 1808. He has on every occasion striven to invest his dismissal with a degree of interest, but in this instance he had unavailingly had recourse to all his influence with the Duke of Wellington and Prussia to obtain the direction of a treaty, and he only retired because it was impossible for him to carry on a negotiation. He had submitted to every thing, he had made a thousand concessions to the czar, even going so far as to recommend Count Pozzo di Borgo as Minister for the Interior; it was all in vain, Alexander never would consent to see or to treat with him. Had Russia withdrawn her influence we should have lost Lorraine and Alsace, which had been claimed by the Germanic Confederation, but when the czar took the negotiations in hand, he stipulated for better conditions than those proposed by Prussia and England. Louis XVIII. took pleasure in relating the scene, at the close of which he asked for or accepted the resignation of the Bishop of Autun, and he described it with all the malicious wit he possessed in so admirable a degree. The king was quite delighted, for he did not at all enjoy the imperative and arbitrary style of proceeding adopted by his minister, who was more apt to request he would affix his signature to the papers he laid before him than inclined to consult him upon any political business; and besides, though the king was a little of a free-thinker, he could not quite forgive the utter disregard of the laws of the Church evinced by a married priest. This feeling was so strong at court, that the Cardinal de Périgord, grand almoner of France, never would recognise any dignity but that of bishop as belonging to his nephew. The Royalist party, now very powerful, lost no opportunity of turning him into ridicule, and clever caricatures always represented him with the crosier in his hand.