M. de Talleyrand was foaming with rage; Louis XVIII.'s composure had staggered him: he, M. de Talleyrand, who prided himself so greatly on his composure, to be beaten on his own ground, given the slip, on a square at Mons, like the most insignificant of men: he could not get over it! He remained dumb, watched the coach moving off, and then, seizing the Duc de Lévis by a button of his spencer: "Go, monsieur le duc, go and say how I am treated! I have put back the crown on the King's head"--he was always harking back to that crown--"and I am going back to Germany to begin the new Emigration." M. de Lévis, listening absent-mindedly, lifting himself on his toes, said: "Prince, I am going; the King must have at least one great lord with him." M. de Lévis flung himself into a hired cariole which was conveying the Chancellor of France: the two grandees of the Capetian Monarchy were going, side by side, to catch it up, sharing expenses, in a Merovingian _benna._ I had asked M. de Duras to endeavour to effect a reconciliation, and to send me the first news of it: "What!" said M. de Duras. "You are remaining behind, after what the King said to you?" M. de Blacas, when leaving Mons in his turn, thanked me for the interest I had shown him. I went back and found M. de Talleyrand embarrassed; he was now regretting that he had not followed my advice and that, like a wrong-headed subaltern, he had refused to go to the King in the evening; he feared that arrangements would be made without him, that he would not be able to participate in the political power and to profit by the financial jobbing which was preparing. I told him that, although I differed from his opinion, I remained none the less attached to him, as an ambassador to his minister; that, besides, I had friends with the King, and that I hoped soon to hear something good. M. de Talleyrand was all tenderness; he leant upon my shoulder: certainly, at that moment, he thought me a very great man. It was not long before I received a note from M. de Duras; he wrote to me from Cambrai that the affair was arranged and that M. de Talleyrand would receive orders to start: this time the prince did not fail to obey. What devil was prompting me? I had not followed the King, who had, so to speak, offered or rather given me the ministry of his Household and who was offended at my obstinacy in remaining at Mons: I was breaking my neck on behalf of M. de Talleyrand whom I hardly knew, whom I did not esteem, whom I did not admire; for M. de Talleyrand who was about to enter into combinations quite different from mine, who lived in an atmosphere of corruption in which I could not breathe! [Sidenote: I neglect fortune.]