When, occupying a considerable place, you find yourself mixed up with prodigious revolutions, these give you a chance importance which the common herd take for your personal merit: lost in Bonaparte's rays, M. de Talleyrand shone, under the Restoration, with the brightness borrowed from a fortune that was not his. The accidental position of the Prince de Bénévent permitted him to attribute to himself the power of overthrowing Napoleon and the honour of restoring Louis XVIII.: have I myself, like all those gapers, not been foolish enough to fall into that fable? When I was better informed, I came to know that M. de Talleyrand was not a political Warwick: his arm lacked the strength that lays low and raises thrones. Impartial numskulls say: "We agree, he was a very immoral man; but what ability!" Alas, no! That hope must be lost too, so consoling for his enthusiasts, so desirable in the interests of the prince's memory: the hope of making M. de Talleyrand a demon. Beyond certain ordinary negociations, at the bottom of which he had the cleverness to place his personal interest in the first rank, there was nothing to be expected of M. de Talleyrand. [Sidenote: Talleyrand's mediocrity.] M. de Talleyrand kept up a few habits and a few maxims for the use of the sycophants and worthless fellows of his intimate circle. His toilet in public, copied after that of a minister in Vienna, was a triumph of diplomacy. He boasted of never being in a hurry; he boasted that time is our enemy and that we must kill it: by this he reckoned to be occupied for only a few moments. But, as, in the last result, M. de Talleyrand did not succeed in transforming his idleness into a master-piece, it is probable that he was mistaken in talking of the necessity of getting rid of time: we triumph over time only by creating immortal things; with works that have no future, with frivolous distractions, we do not kill it: we waste it. M. de Talleyrand entered into office[377] on the recommendation of Madame de Staël, who obtained his appointment from Chénier. He was then very destitute and he began to make his fortune five or six times over again: by the million which he received from Portugal in the hope of a signature of peace with the Directory, a peace which was never signed; by the purchase of Belgian bonds on the Peace of Amiens, of which he, M. de Talleyrand, knew before it was known to the public; by the erection of the short-lived Kingdom of Etruria; by the secularization of the ecclesiastical properties of Germany; by the jobbing of his opinions at the Congress of Vienna. The prince went so far as to try to make over some old papers in our archives to Austria; but this time he was duped by M. de Metternich, who religiously returned him the originals, after having copies taken of them.