The Congress of Vienna 49
he served her with the full measure of devotion. And never
more so than in those busy months at Vienna, when he, the
master intriguer of his age, always excepting his rival
Fouche, for the lily may not be painted, rose to heights of
statesmanship which have placed all future ages in his debt,
and which set France, doubly defeated and discredited as
she was, high at the council table of the nations. So com-
plex are the strands which enter into human character, that
we might picture Talleyrand either as a contemptible villain
or as the hero of a great historic drama, in either case with
almost equal truth. To Carlyle a man must be either a hero
or a fool. Fortunately, in history as in life, the hero and the
fool often live together in the same man, all logic to the
contrary notwithstanding.
Napoleon never liked or trusted Talleyrand, and yet he
could not get along without him. He used him as foreign
minister under the Consulate, then made him grand chan-
cellor of the empire at a salary of half a million francs, and
later placed him in the Principality of Benevento, a danger-
ous honor of which Talleyrand managed to get rid just be-
fore he was to take still a new rôle in the drama of the times.
And so it happened that when all the other njinisters of
Napoleon left Paris, adroit unlucky Talleyrand reached the
barrier just too late and was turned back. So, too, when the
allies entered Paris in triumph, there was our good friend
Talleyrand, the one important man in the capital, ready to
be the host of Alexander, whom he had met before, and,
above all, ready to give wise advice as to the new order of
things both in France and in Europe. And he had to deal
with two men quite as remarkable in their own way as him-
self. There was Metternich, the man of principle, minister
in chief to an old woman called Francis of Austria. And
there, too, was Alexander, Czar of all the Russias, the man