"Accept, monsieur, the homage of my sincere attachment and of my high regard. "TALLEYRAND. "I hope to have the honour of seeing you at the end of the month." Our Minister in Vienna was faithful to his hatred of the great chimera escaped from the shades: he dreaded a blow from its wing. This letter shows, for the rest, all that M. de Talleyrand was capable of doing when he wrote alone: he had the kindness to teach me the "movement," leaving the "graces" to me. It was a question indeed of a few diplomatic phrases on the deposition, on the abdication, on the Treaty of the 11th of April and of the 30th of May, to stop Napoleon! I was very grateful for the instructions given me by virtue of my patent as "a strong man," but I did not follow them: an ambassador _in petto_ I was not at that moment meddling with foreign affairs; I busied myself only with my Ministry of the Interior _ad interim._ But what was taking place in Paris? [231] Jean Baptiste Baron Dalesme (1763-1832) was a brigadier-general under Napoleon, sat in the Legislative Body as Deputy for the Haute-Vienne from 1802 to 1809, and was created a baron of the Empire in 1810. He rallied to the Restoration, which made him a lieutenant-general in October 1814. He was Governor of Elba during the Hundred Days, and left the service on the Second Restoration. He was reinstated in 1830, and died Governor of the Invalides.--B. [232] 4 May 1814.--B. [233] At the celebrated Congress of Erfurt, held in 1808, were present the Emperors Alexander and Napoleon and almost all the sovereigns of Germany. The King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria were the only crowned heads not invited to it.--T. [234] Æneid, X. 174.--B. [235] Marie Countess Walewice-Walewska (circa 1787-1817), _née_ Laczinska, married, first (_circa_ 1804), to Anastasius Colonna, Count Walewice-Walewski, who died in 1814, at the age of eighty-four; secondly, to General Philippe Antoine Comte d'Omano. She visited Napoleon at Elba on the 1st of September 1814, accompanied by a child of four or five years of age. She stayed about fifty hours; during this time the Emperor received no one, not even Madame Mère, who was then in Elba, at Marciana. But, after those fifty hours, Madame Walewska went to Longone to embark for the Continent in a gale so severe that the very sailors feared for her safety. She refused to listen to all representations. The Emperor sent an officer to delay her departure; but she was already out at sea, and Napoleon knew no peace of mind until he had received from the Countess Walewska herself news of her safe arrival. (_Cf._ PONS DE L'HÉRAULT, _Souvenirs et anecdotes de l'île d'Elbe_).--T. [236] Alexandre Florian Joseph de Colonna, Comte, later Duc de Walewski (1810-1868), the reputed illegitimate son of Napoleon I., Minister of Foreign Affairs and, later, President of the Legislative Body under Napoleon III.--T.