"Talleyrand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... VICTOR HUGO'S Choses Vues. Admirable! Fuite de Louis Philippe! What a pitiful story. Then his account, marvellously told, and the whole point of the narrative given in two lines, of what became of the brain of TALLEYRAND. Graphically written is his visit to THIERS on behalf of ROCHEFORT. Says THIERS to him, "Cent journaux me trainent tous les matins dans la boue. Mais savez-vous mon procede? Je ne les lis pas." To which HUGO rejoined, "C'est precisement ce que je fais. Lire les diatribes, c'est respirer ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... arrangement should bear the marks of composure and decency,—a care which may certainly incline one to fancy, that the heroism of his last moments may have had effect, in part, for its aim, and that, as Talleyrand said of Mirabeau, "he dramatized his death." But, it must be remembered, that in those days, it was the custom and the aim of the state prisoners to go to the scaffold gallantly; and thus virtuous men and true penitents walked to their doom attired with the precision ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... deeds be the spirit in which they are done, that fidelity to instant duty, which, according to Herbert, makes an action fine, then his length of years should be very precious to us for its lesson. Talleyrand, whose life may be compared with his for the strange vicissitude which it witnessed, carried with him out of the world the respect of no man, least of all his own; and how many of our own public men have we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... himself with the only thing that "is a joy for ever"—a cultivated intellect—in order to amass a fortune that turns to ashes, when he has time to ask of it any of the pleasures and resources he fondly imagined it would afford him. Like Talleyrand's young man who would not learn whist, he finds that he has prepared for ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... you actually wish a boon companion? You, Baron, the modern Talleyrand, the repository of three emperors' secrets? My dear fellow, I nearly came in ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... forty years ago to the realms to which great chefs are ultimately taken. Coming from France as a young man he established himself in a small cafe opposite the slave market, where he proceeded to cook and let his cooking speak for him. His dinde a la Talleyrand soon made him famous, and he prospered, moving before long to the present building. His sons, Jules and Fernand, were sent to Paris to learn at headquarters the best traditions of the haute cuisine, doing service as apprentices in such establishments as the Maison d'Or and Brabant's. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... them under the right angle, and his life is full of pantomime transformation scenes." The chief characteristic of his wit was its unexpectedness; sometimes acrid, sometimes humorous, his sayings came forth, like Topham Beauclerk's in Dr. Johnson's day, like Talleyrand's in our own, poignant without effort. His calm, gentle voice, contrasted with his startling caustic utterance, reminded people of Prosper Merimee: terse epigram, felicitous apropos, whimsical presentment of the topic under discussion, emitted in a ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... had. When Louis XVI ordered the howitzers turned on the mob at Versailles, and then sent the dragoons to ride down the survivors, the Republican movement had been broken. That had been when Cardinal Talleyrand, who was then merely Bishop of Autun, had came to the fore and become the power that he is today in France; the greatest King's ...
— He Walked Around the Horses • Henry Beam Piper
... deeper. His sense of delight in the mysterious wickedness of the thing was enhanced by an additional spice. It is not given to every man to employ the services of a political Russian lady-spy in his love-affairs! As he thought of it in all its bearings, he felt that he was almost a Talleyrand, or, at ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Talleyrand as a writer English ignorance of French affairs Change of feeling respecting Louis Napoleon 'Loi de surete publique' Manner in which it has been carried out Deportation a slow death Influence of 'hommes de lettres' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Napoleon and Alexander, each for his own part determined to do nothing which might increase the power of Germany, surpassed in cleverness everything ever achieved in celebrated combinations by such diplomats as Talleyrand and Metternich, the two illustrious models of political strategy. The inclusion of Austria in the incidents of the duchies of the River Elbe and the jugglery done with the territory acquired with its direct ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... consequence to absent himself from my house for several weeks, and his example was followed by three fourths of my acquaintance. Those who had been proscribed on the 18th Fructidor, pretended that at that period, I had been guilty of recommending M. de Talleyrand to Barras, for the ministry of foreign affairs: and yet, these people were then continually about that same Talleyrand, whom they accused me of having served. All those who behaved ill to me, were cautious in concealing ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... "Richelieu conveying Cinq-Mars and De Thou to Lyons," "Mazarin on his death-bed," "The sons of Edward in the Tower," and "Cromwell beside the coffin of diaries I."; Ary Scheffer's "Faust and Margaret," "Leonore," "Talleyrand," "Henri IV.," and "Louis Philippe"; Robert's "Pifferari," "Burial," and "Mowers"; Horace Vernet's "Judith," "Capture of the Princes Conde," "Conti, and Longueville," "Camille Desmoulins," and "Pius VIII" To enumerate only a few more of the most important exhibitors I shall yet mention Decamps, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... all.—They stand in the same category of theatrical inventions as the cry of the foundering Vengeur, as the vaunt of General Cambronne at Waterloo, "La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas," as the repartees of Talleyrand.] ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... embassadors (we can scarcely name one) have been in our day, or, indeed, for the last century, elevated into Principal Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs! Such promotions in France have been matters of every-day occurrence since and previous to 1792. Dumouriez, Talleyrand, Reinhard, Champagny, Maret, Bignon, Montmorency, Chauteaubriand, Polignac, Sebastiani, De Broglie, Guizot, Soult, had all been embassadors before they were elevated into the higher, the more responsible, and the more onerous office. In England, since the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... for the paper on which to write his punishment, Mr Robertson said to him, "Already, Evson!" in a tone of displeasure, and with a sarcasm hardly inferior to that of Talleyrand's celebrated "Deja." "Two hundred lines and a lesson to write out already!" Bitter; with no sign of sympathy, without one word of inquiry, of encouragement for the future, or warning about the past; no advice given, no interest shown; ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... treason was the issue of that protracted contest. That he fell a martyr to freedom, our friend Charles F. Hoffman has ably demonstrated. Within a few doors of this place, on Broadway, very many years after, but within my recollection, lived that arch negotiator in public counsels, Talleyrand, the famous ambassador of France to the United States. He published a small tractate on America, once much read, and it was he who affirmed that the greatest sight he had ever beheld in this country, was the illustrious Hamilton, with his pile of books ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... thoughtful student of history can deny, despite all the arguments and sneers of reactionary statesmen and historians, that few more keen-sighted legislative bodies have ever met than this first French Constitutional Assembly. In it were such men as Sieyes, Bailly, Necker, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, DuPont de Nemours and a multitude of others who, in various sciences and in the political world, had already shown and were destined afterward to show themselves among the strongest and shrewdest men ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... folk. Only now and again did three or four members of different races, when they chanced to speak some common language, get an opportunity of enjoying their leisure together. A friend of mine, a highly gifted Frenchman of the fine old type, a descendant of Talleyrand, who was born a hundred and fifty years too late, opened his hospitable house once a week to the elite of the world, and partially met the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... progress, in the forgetfulness of his excitation, my black boy Tommy began to speak apparently quite fluently in their language to the two spies, keeping up a running conversation with them nearly all the time. It seemed that the celebrated saying of Talleyrand, "Language was only given to man to conceal his thought," was thoroughly understood by my seemingly innocent and youthful Fowler's Bay native. When I taxed him with his extraordinary conduct, he told ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... is quite a stir outside," agreed the agitator, blandly. He looked the chairman up and down with interest. "You may call me Sylvester—Talleyrand Sylvester. Yankee dickerer! Buy and sell everything from a clap o' thunder to a second-hand gravestone. It brings me round the country up here, and so I've been the Squire's right-hand man in the political game, such as there's been of it." He turned his back on the pondering Duke and continued, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... worthy of extract from the Literary Gazette, and smacks of the raciest days of the noble utterer.) M. Talleyrand was enjoying his rubber, when the conversation turned on the recent union of an elderly lady of respectable rank. "However could Madame de S——— make such a match? a person of her birth to marry a valet-de-chambre!" "Ah," replied Talleyrand, "it was late in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... of foreign exiles who at this time were moving in Philadelphia society gave a cosmopolitan character to the city, and lent to it the air of foreign capitals. Talleyrand, Beaumais, Vicomte de Noailles and his brother-in-law Lafayette, Volney, the Duc de Liancourt, and General Moreau, and at a later date Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, were but a few of the distinguished members ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... saying of Talleyrand that no one could conceive how pleasant life was capable of being who had not belonged to the French aristocracy before the Revolution. There were, no doubt, in the case of that great man's congeners some legal and constitutional prerogatives which rendered their condition supremely ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... was to lay before an extraordinary council the two alternatives and ask their decision. Murat, Cambaceres, and probably Fouche, voted for Russia. Fouche, like Talleyrand, had long been suspected of playing not for Napoleon's, but for his own interest. A certain independence of conduct and language which he had displayed in raising the national guards to repel the Walcheren expedition had awakened further ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to Men, &c. (Vol. i., p. 83.).—The saying that language was given to men to conceal their thoughts is generally fathered upon Talleyrand at present. I did not know it was in Goldsmith; but the real ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... Adamses before them. Burr had a special affection for the French, and his house was always hospitably open to the expatriated aristocrats during the French Revolution. Volney stopped with him, and Talleyrand, and Louis Philippe himself. Among the Americans his most constant guests were Dr. Hosack, the Clintons, and, oddly enough, Alexander Hamilton! Hamilton, one imagines, found Burr personally interesting, though he had small use for ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Napoleon, realizing not only the importance of the small tract originally involved, but the incalculable advantage that would be derived by the United States could the accession of the whole territory be accomplished. He was, therefore, greatly surprised by a question from Talleyrand, in which he was asked "What we would give for the whole tract?" This was followed by a proposition from Napoleon's representative, Marbois, the state treasurer, in which he offered to sell all the Louisiana Territory to the United States for 100,000,000 francs ($20,000,000), with a ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... omission, pp. 12, 13, I acknowledge its felicity; but it is totally at variance with every other notice of M. de Talleyrand in the work, and entirely dissonant with the elaborate mention of him in the last chapter. When the reviser introduced this pungent remark, he had never even read ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... arrive at an informal understanding with Bonaparte at Paris before he proceeded to Amiens. But he was offended by Bonaparte's manner, and, dreading to be pitted against so subtle a diplomatist as Talleyrand, he left Paris before anything was accomplished, and arrived at Amiens on November 30. There France was represented by Joseph Bonaparte, the first consul's elder brother, and the negotiator of Luneville. At Amiens, the position of the British government was compromised from the first ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... said Grevin, "and this conspiracy your best chance of keeping it. Fouche, Talleyrand, and those two fellows have nothing to do with that. Therefore play fair with them. What nonsense! those who cut Louis XVI.'s head off are in the government; France is full of men who have bought national property, and yet you talk ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... they say to me. Well, so much the better! we shall not have to pay the costs of his political apprenticeship; he knows the affairs of the country; he knows parliamentary necessities; he is much nearer being a statesman than my friend Simon, who will not pretend to have made himself a Pitt or a Talleyrand in a little town ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... better than anybody."—(Lincoln.) (This is also ascribed to Talleyrand. "It is only ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... riding-coat, 'tis all one. Madame de Stael comes out, of his house. She wrote "Lelia." He smiles on her pending the day when he will exile her. Do you insist on an archduchess? wait awhile and he will get one. Tu, felix Austria, nube. His Murat is called Saint-Arnaud; his Talleyrand is called Morny; his Duc d'Enghien is ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... fiction which excel in description, reflection, and sentiment, rather than in pathos, fancy, stirring incident, or artfully contrived plot. But her tone of mind was so essentially and notoriously masculine, that when she asked Talleyrand whether he had read her "Delphine," he answered, "Non, Madame, mais on m'a dit que-nous y sommes tous les deux deguises en femmes."[2] This was a material drawback on her agreeability: in a moment of ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... one of them had aggressive designs which apparently or really affected the welfare of the other; but the result of this prolonged rivalry has been a constantly clearer understanding of their respective national interests. Clear-headed and moderate statesmen like Talleyrand recognized immediately after the Revolution that the substantial interests of a liberalized France in Europe were closely akin to those of Great Britain, and again and again in the nineteenth century this prophecy was justified. Again and again ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... of extremest need, the man was vouchsafed a shred of luck. To answer her satisfactorily would have baffled a Talleyrand. But before he could frame a feeble pretext for his too sanguine prediction, a sampan appeared, eight hundred yards from Turtle Beach, and strenuously paddled by three men. The vague hallooing they had ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... sequester, the profits which Dick had hitherto monopolized, that no wonder Mr. Avenel thought competition should have its limits. "The tongue touches where the tooth aches," as Dr. Riccabocca would tell us. By little and little our Juvenile Talleyrand (I beg the elder great man's pardon) wormed out from Dick this grievance, and in the grievance discovered the origin of Dick's connection with ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noble face, his air of angelic kindness, his soft, yet sonorous voice, produced a deep impression. Josephine was especially moved by the presence of the Vicar of Christ. After resting a few moments in his private apartment, to which he had been conducted by M. de Talleyrand, High Chamberlain, by General Duroc, Grand Marshal of the Palace, and by M. de Sgur, Grand Master of Ceremonies, the Pope paid a visit to Napoleon, who, after an interview of about half an hour, conducted him back to the hall that was at that time called that ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... contradictory curiosity. He urges, in diplomacy, "frankness and clearness;" while, to his fellow-citizens, he offers some very wily diplomatic sentences. Munroe doctrine and manifest destiny are not named; but they are shadowed forth in language worthy of a Talleyrand. First, he glories in his country having never extended its territory by the sword(?); he then proceeds to say—what everybody says in anticipation of conquest, annexation, or absorption—"Our past history forbids that, in future, we should ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... right; at least, poor creatures that we are, as right as we can be; and we must be content with being right, and not happy. For I fear, or rather I hope, that most of us are not capable of carrying out Talleyrand's recipe for perfect happiness on earth—namely, a hard heart and a good digestion. Therefore, as our hearts are, happily, not always hard, and our digestions, unhappily, not always good, we will be content to be made wise by physical science, even ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... this secluded haven drifted men whose lives had been wrecked in the political storms that were then shaking Europe. Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Germans, and Poles, came and tarried for a longer or shorter time. Here Talleyrand, then an exile, spent several days with Cooper's father, and, true to national instinct, wrote, according to local tradition, complimentary verses, still preserved, on Cooper's sister. An ex-captain of the British army was one of the original ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... his vigorous calves, with a strongly marked countenance, a flattened nose, the nostrils garnished with hair, black eyes with thick lashes, from which darted shrewd glances like those of Monsieur de Talleyrand, though somewhat dulled. He still wore republican whiskers and his hair very long; his hands, adorned with bunches of hair on each knuckle, showed the power of his muscular system in their prominent blue veins. He had the chest of the Farnese Hercules, and shoulders fit to carry the stocks. ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... system of medicine, am the biggest humbug in these parts, and if you are going to succeed with me you must be another." But I had already recognized the truth of his last sentence. Probably neither of us had heard of Talleyrand, but from this time I saw that his hearty laugh and lively talk ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... seem that some potent and malign influence, resident at the capital, some high functionary, by some species of occultation, controlling the action of the government, a Talleyrand in the pay of both governments, and balancing or equalizing disasters between them to magnify his importance and increase his reward, has been controlling many events since the beginning of this war, and is still engaged in the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... suggestion of the late Lord Londonderry, then Lord Castlereagh, for the resort of gentlemen who had resided or travelled abroad, as well as with a view to the accommodation of foreigners, who, when properly recommended, receive an invitation for the period of their stay.(41) Here Prince Talleyrand was fond of a game at Whist. With all the advantage of his great imperturbability of face, he is said to have been an ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... it, that beautiful, dear and famous face! I am going to have a large frame made and hang it on my wall, being able to say, as did M. de Talleyrand to Louis Philippe: "It is the greatest honor that my house has received"; a poor phrase, for we two are worth more than ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... took him on the weak side, for like many young men coming to the Bar, and before they had been tried and found wanting, he flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness and penetration. They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in those days, but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand. And if you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled any one, it was the Marquis de Talleyrand-Perigord. It was on the occasion of Archie's first absence that this interest took root. It was vastly deepened when Kirstie ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Talleyrand had been guilty of such extortion in the peace with Austria and with Bavaria that he was complained against by those Powers and therefore removed—it was he who advised the war with Spain, and prevented N. from seeing the Duke d'Enghien, whom he thought ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... to the latest agreeable accession to the parish of St. Marks, with that graceful indirection that gave her the reputation in Sardis of being a feminine Talleyrand: ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... dissimulation, by means of which the springs that move your conduct ought to be made as invisible as those that move the world, must be added absolute self-control. That diplomatic imperturbability, so boasted of by Talleyrand, must be the least of your qualities; his exquisite politeness and the grace of his manners must distinguish your conversation. The professor here expressly forbids you to use your whip, if you would obtain complete control over your ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... their princes, had risen in the name of liberty, soon perceived that they had been used as tools to establish European despotism; they wished to claim the promises that had been made, but the policy of Talleyrand and Metternich weighed on them, and repressing them at the first words they uttered, compelled them to shelter their discontent and their hopes in the universities, which, enjoying a kind of constitution of their own, more easily escaped the investigations made by the spies of the Holy Alliance; ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his house and carry out the necessary experiments.[272] In January 1802 he writes to Dumont[273] proposing to send him a trifling specimen of the Panopticon, a set of hollow fire-irons invented by his brother, which may attract the attention of Buonaparte and Talleyrand. He proceeds to expound the merits of Samuel's invention for making wheels by machinery. Dumont replies, that fire-irons are 'superfluities'—(fire-arms might have been more to Buonaparte's taste)—and that the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of men are dealt with—adherents who have come over from the Royalist camp, as well as those who have won their way upwards as soldiers, as did Napoleon himself. In fact, the work abounds with anecdotes of Napoleon, Talleyrand, Fouche, and a host of others, and astounding particulars are given of the mysterious disappearance of those persons who were unfortunate enough to incur the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Mr. Brooks replied: "Talleyrand said that language was given to man to conceal ideas, and we all know the gentleman's ingenuity in the use of language. The proper time! When will that be?" Mr. Brooks then proceeded at some length ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... distinguished exiles came to this new-country home, and among those who found their way to Otsego Hall was the Marquis de Talleyrand, who was pleased to write an acrostic on Miss Cooper, then seventeen. The famous Frenchman's record, in part, of this visit was "Otsego n'est pas gai." Compared to the France of Talleyrand's day this record was true. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... Convention. "That this is a consolidated government," he said, "is demonstrably clear; and the danger of such a government is, to my mind, very striking." The leader of the Federal party was Alexander Hamilton, the ablest constructive intellect among the statesmen of our revolutionary era, of whom Talleyrand said that he "had never known his equal;" whom Guizot classed with "the men who have best known the vital principles and fundamental conditions of a government worthy of its name and mission." Hamilton's speech On the Expediency ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... That extraordinary man could do nothing on which his talent was not marked; but his letters are epigrammes—all is sacrificed to point, and all is written for the salons of Paris. What Talleyrand's might be, we can imagine from the singular subtlety and universal knowledge of that most dexterous player of the most difficult game which was ever on the diplomatic cards. But as his definition of the excellence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... ridiculous, you will be dead. You will become a foregone conclusion, one of those men condemned inevitably to do one and the same thing. You will come to signify folly as inseparably as M. de La Fayette signifies America; M. de Talleyrand, diplomacy; Desaugiers, song; M. de Segur, romance. If they once forsake their own line people no longer attach any value to what they do. So, foppery, my friend Paul, is the sign of an incontestable power over the female folk. A man who is loved by many women ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... loaded with chains. Mrs. M'Donnell—who was but sixteen—escaped to the British fleet disguised as a midshipman, carrying a basket of vegetables in which her baby was hidden. (Mrs. M'Donnell subsequently married the duc de Talleyrand-Perigord and died at Florence in 1880). Among later residents commemorated is Edward Lloyd, who was the first person to show the value of esparto grass for the manufacture of paper, and thus started an industry which is one of the most ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... cuisine to Philip of Valois; Montesquieu descended, and was not ashamed of his descent, from the second cook of the Connetable de Bourbon, who ennobled him. And from Lord Bacon, "brightest, greatest, meanest of mankind," who took, it is said, great interest in cooking, to Talleyrand, the Machiavelli of France, who spent an hour every day with his cook, we find great men delighting in ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... The future master was far from being the master as yet. Many departments were still in insurrection. Brigandage persisted, and the Midi was ravaged by the struggles of partisans. Bonaparte, as Consul, had to conciliate and handle Talleyrand, Fouche, and a number of generals who thought themselves his equal. Even his brothers conspired against his power. Napoleon, as Emperor, had no hostile party to face, but as Consul he had to combat all the parties ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... she wilfully mislead, like Madame Campan, nor keep back a secret, like Madame Roland, and MM. Bezenval and Ferreires; nor is she ever betrayed by her vanity to invent, like the Due de Lauzun, MM. Talleyrand, Bertrand de Moleville, Marmontel, Madame d'Epinay, etc. When Madame du Hausset is found in contradiction with other memoirs of the same period, we should never hesitate to give her account the preference. Whoever is desirous of accurately knowing ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... Tortoni, opened in the early days of the Empire by Velloni, an Italian lemonade vender, was the most popular of the boulevard cafes, and was generally thronged with fashionables from all parts of Europe. Here Louis Blanc, historian of the Revolution, spent many hours in the early days of his fame. Talleyrand; Rossini, the musician; Alfred Stevens and Edouard Manet, artists, are some of the names still linked with the traditions of the Tortoni. Farther down the boulevard were the Cafe Riche, Maison Doree, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... know, that is those of us who are in good society, that what this uncouth rustic mistook for indifference is the air of society. TALLEYRAND said, or somebody said he said, that the use of language was to conceal thought. Go to WALLACK'S and you will see that the art of acting is to suppress emotions. Everything is below concert-pitch, except perhaps the orchestra, which insists upon playing lively ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... rather, to be "the" leader—of Parisian society, to sit in a salon, the admired of all admirers, and to pull the wires of politics to the advantage of her friends. For a while she succeeded in doing this. It was she who persuaded Barras to give Talleyrand his political start in life. But whereas Barras was willing to act on her advice, Napoleon was by no means equally amenable to her influence. Almost from the first he regarded her as a mischief-maker; and when a spy brought him an intercepted letter in which Madame de Stael exprest ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... and Cisalpines had behaved very badly in their first elections, which had been conducted in his absence; for they had allowed clerical influence to override all French predilections. And, a little later, he wrote to Talleyrand that the genuine love of liberty was feeble in Italy, and that, as soon as French influences were withdrawn, the Italian Jacobins would be murdered by the populace. The sequel was to justify his misgivings, and therefore to refute the charges of those who see in his ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... continued; he devoted his entire attention to his guests, he made conversation and he led it into the channels he desired it to follow. Then, when the psychological moment had come, he acted with the skill of a Talleyrand. No one but he knew precisely how Bob's proposal was couched, whence it originated, or by what subtlety the victim had been induced to make it. As a matter of fact, it was no proposal, and not even Bob himself suspected how ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the most reputable of them, for example. In 1814 he was to be found at the office of Lavallette, the head of the posts, disguising, his enemies said, his delight at the bad news which was pouring in, by exaggerated expressions of devotion. He is accused of a close and suspicious connection with Talleyrand, and it is odd that when Talleyrand became head of the Provisional Government in 1814, Bourrienne of all persons should have been put at the head of the posts. Received in the most flattering manner by Louis XVIII, he was as astonished as poor Beugnot was in 1815, to find himself on 13th May suddenly ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... intermediate space; and in the centre, upon a base twenty-five feet high, stood the altar of the country. Three hundred priests, in white surplices and tricoloured scarfs, covered the steps, and were to officiate. The Bishop of Anton" [afterwards Prince Talleyrand] began the mass. Divine service over, La Fayette received the orders of the King, who handed to him the form of the oath. La Fayette carried it to the altar. At this moment all the banners waved, every sabre glistened. The general the army, the president, the deputies cried ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... eyes higher than the top of my wineglass, lest I should be asked my opinion of some book or subject of which I had never even heard, and in trying to appear well-educated, make as horrible a blunder as poor Madame Talleyrand committed, when she talked to Denon about his man Friday, believing that he wrote 'Robinson Crusoe.' At that time I had never read either Mill or Ruskin; but my profound reverence for the wisdom of your opinions taught me how shamefully ignorant I was, and thus, to fit ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... greatest living diplomat is Leo XIII, and no one deems that he succeeds by deceit. Bismark says there is no success in lying, in diplomacy. Reasons of State are not, in the common consent of mankind, good reasons per se. "Talleyrand was false to every one but true to France." He was an avatar of Machiavelli, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... been a favourite scheme of the French, who have now begun to taste the fruits of it: they have had it in view and in operation ever since we gave them possession of Senegal. It was the system of her late Emperor, Bonaparte, suggested to him by the arch and brilliant genius of Talleyrand, to indemnify the loss ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... interest in politics. "In England," she said, "women are accustomed to be silent before men when political questions are discussed. In France, they direct all conversation, and their minds readily acquire the facility and talent which this privilege requires." Lafayette, Narbonne, and Talleyrand consulted with her. She wrote the principal part of Talleyrand's report on Public Instruction in 1790. She procured the appointment of Narbonne to the ministry; and later, when Talleyrand was in exile, obtained his appointment to the Department of ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... about, and where is he? Present my homage to him. Don't you rather rejoice in the pickle the King of the French finds himself in? I don't know why, but I have a sneaking dislike of the old knave. How he must pine to summon up Talleyrand's Ghost, and what a Ghost it must ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... before to have heard the saying, whether of Talleyrand or of any one else, That all the world is a wiser man than any man in the world. Had it been said even by the Devil, it would nevertheless be false. I have often indeed heard the saying, On peut ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... certainty. One illustration of which is—that pretty nearly every memorable propos, or pointed repartee, or striking mot, circulating at this moment in Paris or London, as the undoubted property of Talleyrand, (that eminent knave,) was ascribed at Vienna, ninety years ago, to the Prince de Ligne, and thirty years previously, to Voltaire, and so on, regressively, to many other wits (knaves or not); until, at length, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Amsterdam, carried on a widespread and secret revolutionary propaganda against the Regulation. They tried to enlist the open co-operation of the French ambassador, Noel, but he, acting under the instruction of the cautious Talleyrand, was not disposed ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... a President all smile and style and grace; Little master wants a Talleyrand or Crichton in the place; Little simpletons want this and that to fill the nation's chair; But the times want ABRAHAM LINCOLN—and, thank GOD, they have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... evening we seemed free. In after-days I received from old Hammerfeldt (a great statesman, as history will one day allow) some lectures on the little pregnant, powerful, empty word. He had some right to speak of freedom; he had seen it fought for by Napoleon, praised by Talleyrand, bought by Castlereagh, interpreted by Metternich. Should he not then know what it was, its value, its potency, and its sweetness, why men died for it, and delicate women who loved them cheered them on? Once also in later years a beautiful woman ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... rather, pouring forth one of his streams of familiar eloquence as to the harshness and cruelty of the Allies. Napoleon, when he was cross, would sometimes wring people's ears till they screamed for pain. Talleyrand, for example, was on one occasion, when held by the ear, so much hurt as to be deprived of his habitual insensibility to Napoleon's insults, and gave vent to the famous aside, "What a pity that so great a man should have been ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a saying of Talleyrand that he who had not lived before 1789 had never known the full charm of life. Germaine Necker grew up in the last bright flush of a society which had, perhaps, as many fascinations as any that the world has known. Her mother, however, though she occupied a prominent position ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... front. The young man assigned to the West front was Goldschmidt Rothschild, one of the last descendants of the great Frankfort family of Rothschild. He had been attached to the German Embassy in London before the war. The one assigned to the unit for the East front was Count Helie de Talleyrand. Both of these young men spoke English perfectly and were chosen for that reason, and both have many ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... that the famous decree, by which Prince de Talleyrand and his illustrious accomplices were sent before the courts of justice, was issued at Lyons in the first burst of a fit of vengeance. It will be seen, that it was the result of a plan simply political: and the noble resistance, which ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... epochs in history certain powers appear, to whom all evils are attributed, though at the same time their genius is denied; they form an efficient argument in the mouth of fools. Just as Monsieur de Talleyrand was supposed to hail all events of whatever kind with a bon mot, so in these days of the Restoration the clerical party had the credit of doing and undoing everything. Unfortunately, it did and undid nothing. Its influence was not wielded by a Cardinal ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the Court than to political attack or personal persecution; but other circumstances of a more serious, because of an international, character have now and again attended the publication of a caricature. For example, like the Hi-Talleyrand episode, Leech's famous cartoon of "Cock-a-doodle-do!" (February 13th, 1858) promised at one time—less directly, it is true—to bring unpleasant consequences in its train. In the spirit of the Prince de Joinville, whose bombastic language towards England in 1848 had set an example not ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... sweet-tempered, high-minded Southrons of la belle France. To her Sydney Smith traced his native gaiety; her beauty did not, certainly, pass to him as well as to some of her other descendants. When Talleyrand was living in England as an emigrant, on intimate terms with Robert Smith, Sydney's brother, or Bobus, as he was called by his intimates, the conversation turned one day on hereditary beauty. Bobus spoke of his mother's personal perfections: 'Ah, mon ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty? is he of the movement? is he of the establishment? but is he anybody? does he stand for something? He must be good of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand, all that State Street, all that the common sense of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... at the head of the practical class, share the ideas of the time, and have too much sympathy with the speculative class. It is not from men excellent in any kind, that disparagement of any other is to be looked for. With such, Talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty? is he of the movement? is he of the establishment?—but, Is he anybody? does he stand for something? He must be good of his kind. That is all that ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sometimes with foaming partiality. Napoleon and Ney were their favourites. Their wrath against the allied Powers was unappeasable. How often have I heard them thunder out that Bonny would have wiped Wellington and his myrmidons off the field but for the treachery of Fouche, Talleyrand, and his own generals (Fouche in particular). Wellington's prayer for "night or Bluecher" was always used in mitigation of what might be called an unpatriotic opinion. I have listened to the diatribes ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... maternal line from the family of Parker, which gave to Norwich one of its most distinguished sons in the famous Archbishop of Queen Elizabeth's day. He extended his business as carpenter sufficiently to die a prosperous builder. Of his two sons one, also named Thomas, became physician to Prince Talleyrand, and married a sister of John Stuart Mill.[14] All this by the way, but there is little more to record of Borrow's mother apart from the letters addressed to her by her son, which occur in their due place ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... said of Talleyrand that he needed no sleep, as his pulse ceased to beat after a certain number of strokes, for a brief space, and then resumed pulsation. During that pause, his physical and mental powers had time for recuperation. Be that as it may, it is certain that to some persons whose minds ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... smelled as if assailing an Andalusian heaven. The salad was piquante; the trifle vivacious; Kate's bonbons were regarded as unique, and as for the coffee, it provoked Marna to quote the appreciative Talleyrand:— ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... yonder altar, and before whom all the authorities of Paris bowed—who was her husband, her Bonaparte, everywhere conqueror! Before her only was he the conquered! She listened with a happy smile to the long speech with which Talleyrand saluted Bonaparte in the name of his country; she heard how Barras, concealing within himself his jealousy and his envy, welcomed him; how with admiration he praised him; how he said that Nature, in one of her most exalted and greatest moments, had resolved to produce a masterpiece, and had ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... prickly pear clinging to their clefts and ledges, or across a rift of sea to the huge bare front of the Testa del Cane with gigantic euphorbias, cactus, and orange-gardens fringing its base. A bribe administered to Talleyrand is said to have saved the political existence of Monaco at the Congress of Vienna: but it is far more wonderful that, after all the annexations of late years, it should still remain an independent, though the smallest, principality in the world. But even the Grimaldis have not ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... naive gentleness. 'Unfortunately, contact with the German race has for ever spoilt my opinion of those people.' They are to him merely a nation that does not know how to behave. He reminds one of Talleyrand, who said of Napoleon after one of his rages: 'What a pity that so great a man should have been so badly brought up.' But there was malice in that understatement of Talleyrand's; and there is none in the understatement of this Frenchman. He has no desire for revenge; his only wish is that his duty ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... and ordered to submit, but as free people whose claims must be considered. "Everybody says," wrote Lord Palmerston to Lord Granville, "that the Belgians are mad and that it is useless to discuss with them. I have noticed that there is a good deal of method in their madness." Talleyrand, who was not too well disposed towards the Belgian emissaries and "their reticences," wrote on June 24th: "We have been in conference for forty hours, but the Belgian delegates are so little accustomed to this kind of negotiations, they create so many difficulties, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... covering the mouth of the Mississippi. It had been in Spanish hands since 1763; but Talleyrand, Bonaparte's foreign minister, put pressure upon Spain, and Louisiana became French once more under the secret treaty of San Ildefonso (October 1800). The news of the retrocession, however, aroused intense feeling ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... will not speak of M. de Talleyrand, whose face and figure were striking enough, though they made but little impression on our uninformed imaginations. Yet I remember the fits of laughter we went into one day, when my father, in a fit of absence, aped ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... place of execution, was the scene of the tragic death of the young Henri de Talleyrand, Comte de Chalais, executed by Louis XIII. for his part in the conspiracy which bears his name. Its object was the death of the Cardinal, and to place the crown on the head of the feeble Gaston, who was celebrating his marriage at Nantes at the time that ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... the operation, still less the operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli, that seedy Rosicrucian—for something of all these he vaguely deems him—passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he make out a logical case. The doctrine of analogies ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... "the amateur turner," has been a frequent visitor at the palace of late. Palmerston, it is whispered, has been receiving lessons in the art. We are surprised to hear this, for we always considered his lordship a Talleyrand in turning. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... this man is a monomaniac. I drag him away from his work, and here he is discoursing with you on reform just as a race is going to start. You may imagine, my dear, what a thorn he is in the side of the bigwigs. You have heard of Talleyrand's advice to a young official, 'Above all things, no zeal.' Go away, Bathurst; Miss Hannay wants to see the race, and even if she doesn't she is powerless to assist you in ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... responsive chords in the great American heart, all-important that his very soul yearned for the preservation of the Government established through the toil and sacrifice of the generation that had gone. How hopeless the Republic in that dark hour, had its destiny hung upon the statecraft of Talleyrand, the eloquence of Mirabeau, or the genius of Napoleon! It was fortunate indeed that the ark of our covenant was then borne by the plain, brave man of conciliatory spirit and kind words, whose heart, as Emerson has said, 'was as large as ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... who acts as your second in a duel. The gentlemanlike urbanity with which he waits on the opposite friend—the conciliating tone with which he proffers implacable enmity—the killing kindness with which he refuses all accommodation—the Talleyrand air of his short notes, dated from the "Travellers," or "Brookes," with the words 3 o'clock or 5 o'clock on the cover, all indicative of the friendly precipitancy of the negociation. Then, when all is settled, the social style with which he asks you to take a ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... paragraph its fit ending, the thought allows of an epigrammatic point, if he does not happen to have one of his own he knows where to borrow just what is wanted. Speaking of embellished oratorical diction, he quotes Talleyrand on some polished oration that was discussed in his presence: "It is not enough to have fine sentences: you must have something to put into them." Commenting on the hyper-spirituality of M. Laprade, he ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Cooper's eldest daughter, of whom Fenimore Cooper afterward wrote that she "was perhaps as extensively and favorably known in the middle states as any female of her years." In 1795, when she was seventeen years of age, Talleyrand was a guest at Otsego Hall, and the following acrostic on Hannah Cooper's name is attributed to the pen of the ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... to the utmost that the will can. In that sense it is a very intelligible and practical piece of advice, that the wise man should labour to have no passions. It is the advice embodied in Horace's Nil admirari, Talleyrand's "No zeal," Beaconsfield's "Beware of enthusiasm." It would have man to work like a scientific instrument, calm as a chronometer, regulated by reason alone. This was the Stoic teaching, this the perfection ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... independent habits, has revolutionised the course of many lives. Some amusements which may in themselves be but little valued are wisely cultivated as helping men to move more easily in different spheres of society, or as providing a resource for old age. Talleyrand was not wholly wrong in his reproach to a man who had never learned to play whist: 'What an unhappy old age ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... embraced the popular cause with all the ardor of youth. But, soon disapproving the excesses committed in the name of Liberty, he sided with the Reactionists, advised, perhaps, by Roederer, who was one of his relatives. Commended to the favor of the First Counsel by M. de Talleyrand, he began his diplomatic career with a mission to Switzerland; and during the existence of the First Empire he was entrusted with many important negotiations. Devoted to the Emperor, he found himself gravely compromised at the advent of the Second ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... evening of the 8th, BONAPARTE left Paris for Lyons, where TALLEYRAND, Minister for foreign affairs, has been for some days preparing for the great event which is expected to take place. When a public measure is in agitation, the result is generally anticipated by the eagerness of mankind; and whispers the least audible are magnified into authentic ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... by the scene of action, suffering terribly from want of water. Next day, Sunday, September 18, Edward pursued the French as near as he could to Poitiers, halting in battle array within a league of the town. A further check on his impatience now ensued. Innocent VI.'s legate, the Cardinal Talleyrand, brother of the Count of Perigord, who was with the French army, crossed to the rival host with an offer of mediation. Edward received the cardinal courteously and spent most of the day in negotiations. But the French showed no eagerness to bring ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... equalisation which mankind have carried out; the hills were made low, and the valleys filled. At last the great theatre of liberty was ready. At the altar of the Fatherland a fire of perfumed wood was kindled, and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, with a retinue of four hundred white-robed priests consecrated the flags. The King in civil dress and the Queen sat on the platform, and, as the 'first citizens of the State,' took the constitutional ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... of Europe are curiously interested and amazed in the rise of America, and their rulers at present compete for our friendship. 'Europe,' said the prince Talleyrand, long ago, 'must have an eye on America, and take care not to offer any pretext for recrimination or retaliation. America is growing every day. She will become a colossal power, and the time will come when (discoveries enabling ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith |
