CHAPTER II

THE ABBÉ MALGRÉ LUI

It will hardly be thought that up to this point there is any mystery about the person of Talleyrand. Many types of character were produced by this enforcement of the ecclesiastical profession. A few youths were touched by the better influences of their surroundings, and nobly turned to the great models of Bossuet and Fénélon. A large number drifted impatiently through the seminary, enlivened it with frequent dips into the stream of Parisian life, and emerged as the philosophic abbés and bishops we shall meet presently, ecclesiastical only in title and purse. Many worked silently and steadily through the years of study with a more or less clear political ideal always in mind, using the general education of the priest and the specific training of a systematised theology for their ulterior purposes. Such were Sieyes, Talleyrand, Fouché, Louis, Montesquiou, Daunou, Reinhard, La Besnardière. It might have been predicted at an early stage that Talleyrand would fall in the third class. Then the peculiarly painful

circumstances of his exclusion from the more natural career, which he so much desired, would make him independent, self-centred, calculating, lightly cynical.

Add a reasoned disbelief in religious teaching (th it is impossible to say when this began), and we surely understand Talleyrand in his twentieth year, gravely discussing priestly qualities from the Sorbonne pulpit, while his heart is at Versailles. But we are a long way advanced in the work of interpreting our "Sphinx."

About the close of Talleyrand's course of study at the seminary, Louis XVI was to be crowned at Rheims, and Talleyrand's parents invited him to assist at the ceremony. His father was to have a function in the proceedings, and his uncle would annoint the sovereign if, as was feared, the aged Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon was unable to do so. But this effort of Talleyrand's parents to interest him in his vocation only shows once more how far they were from understanding his character. Looking back on that splendid spectacle of the coronation through the ghastly fires of the Revolution, Talleyrand said that "never did so brilliant a spring presage so stormy an autumn, so dire a winter." No doubt there were statesmen present who tried to look up the darkening avenue, and wondered how the honest young king and his beautiful queen would meet the dangers that were gathering over the impoverished country. To Sub-Deacon Talleyrand✶ the spectacle must have held another element of tragedy. At the

Lady Blennerhassett and most biographers wrongly describe him as a priest. He was not ordained until four years later. The archives of the Sorbonne, in registering his application in April and June, 1775, speak of him as a sub-deacon.

time it probably only afforded him a tantalising vision of the gay world from which they would exclude him. Such prestige as the priest had, with his golden cope and sacramental oil and theatrical asceticism, was the last kind he would think of seeking. No doubt he was aware that it was an age of compromise. He would see archbishops (such as Dillon and De Brienne), and bishops and abbés without number, who had their belles amies and boxes at the opera. The sight of them made the Church less intolerable. He made their acquaintance, was introduced to some of the great ladies of Paris-the Duchess de Luynes, the Duchess de Fitz-James, the Viscountess de Laval, and others. His conversation seems to have shown already some of the sparkle which made it so much sought later. He pleased. Some of the most fashionable salons were open to him, as soon as the Church should provide him with an income.

The income was on its way. The story usually runs that Talleyrand was one day in the salon of Mme. du Barry with a lively group of young nobles. She noticed his silence, and asked what he was thinking of. "Alas! madame," he is reported to have said, "I was thinking how much easier it is to get an amie than an abbaye at Paris." The story concludes that he was at once rewarded with the abbey of St. Denis, at Rheims, with a revenue of 18,000 livres.* As a fact, Talleyrand

* On the strength of this absurd story historians like Professor Sloane inform their readers that Talleyrand "was a friend of the infamous

did not see the inside of Versailles until two or three years after the death of Louis XV, and the disappearance of Mme. du Barry. He did not become abbé until more than a year later, and was not ordained priest until much later still. M. de Lacombe has patiently traced his early movements in the ecclesiastical records at Rheims and Paris, and we are able to set aside most of the legends of his precocious gaiety. However, he had already begun to climb the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment. In January he had been made (while yet in minor orders) chaplain of the lady-chapel in the parish church at Rheims. He then received the sub-deaconate, and immediately after the coronation he was chosen by the clergy of Rheims to represent them at the General Assembly of the clergy. This was a singular distinction for one of his age, barely in sacred orders (though one other sub-deacon figures in the list of deputies), and it compels us to suppose that he had won some attention. A General Assembly of the Clergy met at Paris, as a rule, every five years, to discuss the more important affairs of the French Church. Each ecclesiastical province sent four delegates, two of the order of prelates and two of the lower clergy, and they sat from four to six months, discussing their financial and political relation to the State, as well as questions of discipline and religion.

Mme. du Barry, and owed his promotion to her." So the legendary Talleyrand still lingers in serious literature. The story contains a gross anachronism, and the mere fact of the abbey being at Rheims points at once to the influence of Archbishop Talleyrand having obtained it for his nephew.

For those who would understand the conduct of Talleyrand in later years, especially his "betrayal" of the Church, it is necessary to see these scenes of his earlier clerical days as he saw them. In the seminary he had learned the stately Catholic ideal of the priest, but had noted with even keener eye how ready the Church was to compromise with it. At Rheims he had seen clearly enough the relations of prelates and duchesses, the price by which the Church retained its prestige in a Voltairean world. At Paris the comedy-rapidly dissolving into tragedy would continue. In the convent of the GrandsAugustins the thirty-two prelates, in rich surplices, sit in their thirty-two fauteuils; behind each prelate sits, on a “chair with a back," the corresponding delegate of the lower clergy in black mantle and square bonnet. The first great question is: How much is the King going to ask of us? For years jurists and politicians, and latterly philosophers, had murmured at the exemption of the clergy from taxation. The Church had only retained its privilege by paying a few millions at each assembly in the form of a "gratuitous gift." But the amount of the gift was fixed by the King, and it would fare ill with the clergy if they refused it. In the increasing financial distress the "gifts" grew larger and more frequent. At this particular Assembly in July, 1775, the King's messengers announce that he asks sixteen millions* of his devoted clergy. Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon, the

* I speak throughout the work of livres (= francs) unless I state otherwise. It is not true that, as is often said, the sum was invariable.