[381] Talleyrand read his _Éloge de Reinhard_ at the Institute on the 3rd of March 1838. The room was crowded. M. Mignet, the Perpetual Secretary, went to meet him in the room adjoining the lecture-room. The prince, who was then in his eighty-fifth year, was not able to climb the stairs on foot; he was carried up by two men in livery. When he entered the lecture-room, leaning on M. Mignet's arm and on his crutch, the whole audience stood up. His speech was delivered in a very strong voice and was frequently interrupted by applause. The reading took less than half an hour in all, which constituted the whole performance. When it was over, the enthusiasm knew no bounds: "On his way out," says Sainte-Beuve (_Nouveaux Lundis_, Vol. I., p. 110), "the prince had to pass through a double row of foreheads which bowed with redoubled reverence."--B. [382] The Prince de Talleyrand died on the 17th of May 1838, at thirty-five minutes past three in the afternoon; he was horn on the 2nd of February 1754, and was consequently 84 years, 3 months and 15 days old. He was assisted in his last illness by the Abbé Dupanloup, the future Bishop of Orleans, who himself wrote the story of the prince's last moments. On the morning of the 17th of May, M. de Talleyrand had signed his retractation and a letter to the Pope; some hours later, the Abbé Dupanloup arrived. Upon a word from the abbé, saying that Monseigneur de Quélen, the Archbishop of Paris, would be happy to give his life for him, he raised himself a little and said, in a very distinct voice: "Tell him that he can make a much better use of it." "Prince," continued the abbé, "this morning you gave the Church a great consolation; I now come, in the name of the Church, to offer you the last consolations of faith, the last succour of religion. You have been reconciled with the Catholic Church, which you had offended; the moment is come to be reconciled with God by a new confession and a sincere repentance for all the faults of your life." "Thereupon," in the words of the Abbé Dupanloup, "he made a movement as though to come towards me; I went up to him, and, at once grasping my two hands in his and pressing them with extraordinary force and emotion, he did not leave go of them during the whole time that his confession took to make; I had even to make a great effort to release my hand from his, when the moment had come to give him absolution. He received it with an humility, an amount of feeling and faith that made me shed tears."