Historical Characters. Henry Bulwer
Mirabeau should confidentially communicate, had told Mirabeau he most relied. Lastly, he was acquainted with all the classes and almost all the individuals then seeking to disturb, or hoping to compose, the disordered elements of society. He knew the court, the clergy, the Orleanists. He had been one of the founders of the Jacobins; he was a member of its moderate rival, the Feuillans; and although, undoubtedly, he wanted the fire and eloquence necessary to command in great assemblies, he was pre-eminent in the tact and address which enable a man to manage those by whom such assemblies are led.
In short, though Mirabeau left no Mirabeau behind him, M. de Talleyrand was, perhaps, the person best qualified to supply his loss, and the one whom Mirabeau himself was most likely to have pointed out for a successor. I have no clue, however, beyond conjecture, to guide me on this subject, unless the public trust which Mirabeau confided to M. de Talleyrand in his last hours may be cited as a testimony of his other and more secret intentions. What this trust was, we may learn from the statement of M. de Talleyrand himself, who, on the following day, amidst a silence and a sorrow which pervaded all parties (for a man of superior genius, whatever his faults, rarely dies unlamented), ascending the tribune of the National Assembly, said in a voice which appeared unfeignedly affected:
“I went yesterday to the house of M. de Mirabeau. An immense crowd filled that mansion, to which I carried a sentiment more sorrowful than the public grief. The spectacle of woe before me filled the imagination with the image of death; it was everywhere but in the mind of him whom the most imminent danger menaced. He had asked to see me. It is needless to relate the emotion which many things he said caused me. But M. de Mirabeau was at that time above all things the man of the public; and in this respect we may regard as a precious relic the last words which could be saved from that mighty prey, on which death was about to seize. Concentrating all his interest on the labours that still remain to this Assembly, he remembered that the law of succession was the order of the day, and lamented he could not assist at the discussion of the question, regretting death, because it deprived him of the power of performing a public duty. But, as his opinion was committed to writing, he confided the manuscript to me, in order that I might in his name communicate it to you. I am going to execute this duty. The author of the manuscript is now no more; and so intimately were his wishes and thoughts connected with the public weal, that you may imagine yourselves catching his last breath, as you listen to the sentiments which I am about to read to you.”
Such were the words with which M. de Talleyrand prefaced the memorable discourse which, in establishing the principles on which the law of inheritance has since rested in France, laid the foundations of a new French society, on a basis which no circumstance that can now happen seems likely to alter.
“There is as much difference,” said Mirabeau, “between what a man does during his life, and what he does after his death, as between death and life. What is a testament? It is the expression of the will of a man who has no longer any will respecting property which is no longer his property; it is the action of a man no longer accountable for his actions to mankind; it is an absurdity, and an absurdity ought not to have the force of law.”
Such is the argument set forth in this celebrated and singular speech. Ingenious rather than profound, it does not seem, as we turn to it coolly now, worthy of the reputation it attained, nor of the effect which it has undoubtedly produced. But, read in M. de Talleyrand’s deep voice, and read as the last thoughts upon testamentary dispositions of a man who was making his own will when he composed it, and who since then was with his luminous intellect and marvellous eloquence about to be consigned to the obscure silence of the grave, it could hardly fail to make a deep impression. It was, moreover, the mantle of the departed prophet; and the world, whether wrong or right in the supposition, fancied that it saw in this political legacy the intention to designate a political successor.
Thus, M. de Talleyrand, already, as we have seen, a member of the department of Paris, was immediately chosen to fill the place in the directorship of that department, an appointment which Mirabeau’s death left vacant.
In this municipal council, considerable influence still existed; nor did it want various means for exercising that influence over the middle classes of the capital; so that a man of resolution and tact could have made it one of the most useful instruments for restoring the royal authority and consolidating it on new foundations.
It seems not unlikely, indeed, that M. de Talleyrand had the design of making it popular as the organ of good advice to the King, and of making the King popular by engaging him to listen to this advice, since we find that it drew up an address to him on the 18th April (about a fortnight after Mirabeau’s death), urging him to put aside from his councils those whom the nation distrusted, and to confide frankly in the men who were yet popular: whilst there is reason to believe, as I shall by-and-by have occasion to show, that M. de Talleyrand entered about this time into secret negotiations with the King, or, at least, offered him, through M. de Laporte, his best assistance.
But Louis XVI. was more likely to trust a bold and passionate man like Mirabeau, whom, notwithstanding his birth, he looked upon – considering the situation in which the Revolution had found him – as an adventurer who had been almost naturally his opponent, until he had purchased his support, rather than a man like M. de Talleyrand; a philosopher, a wit, who might be said to have been bred a courtier; and, on the other hand, M. de Talleyrand himself was too cautious to commit himself boldly and entirely to the daring and doubtful schemes which Mirabeau had prepared, until he saw a tolerable chance of their being successful.
Other circumstances, moreover, occurred at this time, which could not but have an unfavourable influence as to the establishment of any serious concert between the scrupulous and mistrustful monarch, and the chess-playing, constitutional bishop.
When M. de Talleyrand rejected the archbishopric of Paris, it was clear that he expected nothing further from the church; and he no doubt from that moment conceived the idea of freeing himself from its trammels on the first decent opportunity: nor did he long wait for this opportunity, for, on the 26th of April, one day after his consecration of the Curé Expelles, the newly-elected Bishop of Finisterre, arrived a brief thus announced in the Moniteur of the 1st of May, 1791:
“Le bref du Pape est arrivé jeudi dernier. De Talleyrand-Périgord, ancien évêque d’Autun, y est suspendu de toutes fonctions et excommunié, après quarante jours s’il ne revient pas a résipiscence.”23
The moment had now come for that decisive measure which the unwilling ecclesiastic had for some time contemplated; for he had too much tact to think of continuing his clerical office under the interdiction of the head of his church, and was by no means prepared to abandon his political career, and to reconcile himself with Rome, on the condition of separating himself from wealth and ambition. But one alternative remained – that of abandoning the profession into which he had been forced to enter. This he did at once, and without hesitation; appearing in the world henceforth (though sometimes styled in public documents the Abbé de Périgord, or the ancien évêque d’Autun) under the plain designation of M. de Talleyrand, a designation which I have already frequently applied to him, and by which, though he was destined to be raised to far higher titles, he has by universal consent descended to posterity. The act was a bold one; but, like most bold acts in difficult circumstances, it was not (I speak of it as a matter of worldly calculation) an imprudent one: for it released an indifferent priest from a position which he could only fill with decency by a constant hypocrisy, for which he was too indolent; and it delivered up an able statesman to a career for which, by the nature of his talents, he was peculiarly fitted. Neither was M. de Talleyrand’s withdrawal from the church so remarkable a fact at that moment as it would have been at any other; for France, and even Europe, were then overrun by French ex-ecclesiastics of all grades, who were prohibited from assuming their rank and unable to fulfil their duties, and who, in many cases, were obliged to conceal their real calling under that from which they earned a daily subsistence.
Nevertheless, the Bishop of Autun’s particular case excited and merited attention. It had been as an organ and representative of the French church, that this prelate had contributed in no slight degree to alienate its property and change its constitution; and now, his brethren in the French clergy being what he had made them, he voluntarily
“The brief of the Pope arrived last Thursday. De Talleyrand-Périgord, the late Bishop of Autun, is suspended from all functions and excommunicated, if after forty days he has not repented.”