Another figure destined to play an important part in the framing of the Concordat was the celebrated character of the Revolution, Charles Maurice Talleyrand, the former Bishop of Autun, an apostate who had added to his iniquities the crime of marrying a divorced Protestant. The whole work of this strange personage consisted in placing obstacles to the completion of an understanding between the French government and the Holy See. In fact, it was only during his absence from Paris, while he was taking the waters of a bath, that the negotiators could finally place their signatures to the definitive document. Gregoire, the constitutional Bishop of Nancy, performed with Talleyrand, the office of instructor in ecclesiastical matters to the First Consul. A Gallican of Gallicans, an intense hater of the old regime, jansenistic and puritanical in his perverted piety, and obstinate in his adhesion to the principles of the Revolution, neither he nor the Minister of Foreign Affairs was a worthy interpreter of the mind and doctrines of the Church, especially in an affair of such great importance. It is, no doubt, due to the influence of these two ambitious men that the First Consul showed himself at times, during the discussions, somewhat hostile to the interests of the Church, and disposed to throw over the whole tenor of the Concordat the restrictions of pure Gallicanism. [Illustration: THE ABBE BERNIER.] The Abbe Bernier, doctor in theology, and former curé of St. Laud of Angers, was the most intimate of all the officials concerned in the work of the Concordat. A man of retired and mysterious ways, living alone in the third story of a house in a side street of the city, he carried into the discussions a mind fully attuned to the demands of Bonaparte, and directed by the instructions Of Talleyrand. He was far from being a Revolutionist, having played an important part in the Royalist army during the war of the Vendee, an episode in his life which was never fully forgiven by Bonaparte; yet he could be relied upon by his master as one who would grant to the Pope the least possible concessions, while exacting from the Holy See as much as one could under the circumstances.