The name is absent

48 Nineteenth Century Peace Congresses

It was on this occasion that he is said to have turned to one
of his companions, just as the solemn religious festival was
about to begin, and whispered: “Don’t make me laugh!”

Napoleon himself has left on record a short and pithy
character sketch of his minister. On their last interview in
1814 he said: “You are a coward, a liar, a thief. You do
not believe even in God. You would sell your own father.”
But then Napoleon may have been prejudiced, though he
certainly had every reason to recognize a master liar when
he saw one, belonging himself to the very first rank of the
great liars of history. Talleyrand, like Fouche, had been a
man of too keen intellectual powers to serve even a master
like Napoleon blindly. He used his important position to
secure for himself a great fortune extracted from the un-
lucky princes along the Rhine who lost their estates to make
room for the simpler administrative arrangements which
Napoleon determined to introduce. But he recognized far
sooner than his master the strength of the dawning spirit
of nationality. He advised Napoleon against his Spanish
adventure, and later, at the time of the expedition into
Russia, said, “This is the beginning of the end!” Napoleon
resented his advice, and in a spirit of sardonic humor made
his disgraced minister the unwilling host of the Spanish
princes kidnapped at Bayonne. Talleyrand was compelled
to entertain them in his country palace, and he well knew
that his own safety depended on the care with which he
guarded Charles and Ferdinand. His master added insult
to injury by commanding the former bishop to marry the
lady with whom scandal had connected his name. Evidently
the two men had only small reason to love each other. But
with all the servant’s avarice and hypocrisy, this much we
can say for him which we could not say for the greater man.
He always loved France well, and when the moment came

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