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 SieyÈs, 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 (though it is impossible to say when this began), and we can 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 anoint 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 Talleyrand4 the spectacle must have held another element of tragedy. At the 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.5 As a fact, Talleyrand 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.

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 Grands-Augustins 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 millions6 of his devoted clergy. Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon, the president, informs them that they lay the sum at his feet—reminding him, however, of his promise at the last Assembly to moderate his demands—and the messengers withdraw.

Then the founts of clerical rhetoric are opened. Talleyrand observes in his memoirs that “the intervention of conscience in these money matters gave the speeches a kind of eloquence that is peculiarly at the command of the clergy.” The Archbishop of Auch (with 120,000 a year from his bishopric alone) is deputed to express the common feeling. They are personally most eager to help their country, but the resources they control belong to the service of God and the altar. Is not the King confusing their goods with the monies of “profane commerce”? They sink under “immense burdens,” and are “exhausted” with gratuitous gifts. [The Church has an income of 150,000,000 livres a year.] Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon (with one religious sinecure alone worth 130,000 a year) nods acquiescence. Archbishop Dillon (160,000 a year and odd sinecures), Archbishop de Brienne (only 90,000 as yet—he is not yet Prime Minister), Archbishop de la Rochefoucauld (100,000), and the other prelates agree. Hardly a delegate but is abbÉ commendataire of some place or other. The abbacy of St. Bernard’s historic monastery, where the monks once ate the leaves of the forest, is worth 400,000 a year. The Benedictines of Saint-Maur (1,672 in number) have a revenue of 8,000,000 livres. Cardinal Prince de Rohan has a total income of 2,500,000 a year, and is heavily in debt. So is Dillon, who spends six months of each year in hunting, and a great deal of the rest in less healthy occupation. However, they will contrive to find sixteen millions this time—and trust the King will return it in other ways. The AbbÉ de PÉrigord,7 pale, silent, in black mantle and square bonnet, observes it all, and makes (internally) reflections on venerable institutions and “zeal.”

In the course of the sittings several other questions came on that were not without irony. Chief amongst these were the decay of the monastic orders and the growth of infidelity and Protestantism. Some of the most powerful prelates in the Assembly, as well as many deputies of the second order, were Voltairean in opinion and less than Voltairean in practice. All joined in the appeals to King and Pope to reform or suppress the corrupt and decaying monastic bodies, to stem the flood of philosophic literature, and to arrest the growth of Protestantism. They were honest at least in their attack on monasticism. It was one of the ideas of the philosophers, and was rapidly spreading amongst the people. Hardly a day passed now without an attack on them, and Talleyrand says that not a pen was lifted in their defence during the twenty years preceding the Revolution. At the States-General in 1789 one peasant deputy arrived with instructions to work for the suppression of pheasants, rabbits, and monks. Besides the usual struggle to disavow the feudal obligations, which the Court lawyers were constantly trying to fix on the clergy, the other matters discussed were mainly disciplinary.

Such was Talleyrand’s initiation to the inner life of the Church. Those who regret that, when he found himself forced even involuntarily into the ecclesiastical career, he did not endeavour to take a religious and self-sacrificing view of it, will do well to ponder these spectacles. Talleyrand’s course was natural. He used the influence of the president, who had a strong liking for him, to enter the gayer group of prelates. Dillon and de Brienne opened a few more of the Parisian salons to him. In the course of the sittings he had been made “promoteur” (a kind of sub-secretary, usually given a fair gratuity at the close), and was appointed to an unimportant committee on the voting counters and a very important one on religion and jurisdiction. He claims that he won some distinction in this Assembly, and was already marked for the high position of Agent-General of the Clergy. In September (1775—or eighteen months after Mme. du Barry has quitted the scene) we find a notice in the Gazette that he has been appointed abbÉ commendataire of the abbey of St. Denis at Rheims, which brought him an income of 18,000 livres a year. The diplomatic career thus began. The Pope confirmed the election of the sub-deacon abbÉ, and the prior took possession in Talleyrand’s name in December. As Chamfort put it, the ecclesiastical bachelor naturally looked to a wedding with some rich abbey to pay his debts. Bishops, Pope, and King acquiesced in the system without a murmur. All the bishops had sinecures of the sort, and the Court contrived to keep a few vacant at times and pocket the revenues. Talleyrand had not voluntarily entered the ecclesiastical world, and he was determined to make it serve his own ideal as far as possible. But one of his first acts was to pay off the debt his parents still owed to the CollÈge d’Harcourt.

Before going to Rheims he had applied for admission into the Society of the Sorbonne and been accepted (after formal proof of his moral and intellectual qualities). He took up residence there after the close of the Assembly. With his abbatial income (more than £700 a year) and the prospect of scraps of political and administrative work, he could have at once begun an independent residence in Paris. But that would have left him in the ambiguous position of a cleric and celibate, cut off from the higher clerical distinctions and possibilities. He must now complete his ecclesiastical education in the usual way, and proceed by way of the Agency-General (to come in 1780) to the episcopate.

However, the Sorbonne had not an intimidating repute for austerity. The AbbÉ Morellet, who had lived there with Turgot and de Brienne, describes in his memoirs the condition of the Sorbonne, and the details of what we may call its “fellowships,” in the eighteenth century. Its library supplied him with Locke, Bayle, and Clarke, as well as with Bellarmine and Aquinas. He read Voltaire, and associated with Diderot and d’Alembert. Theological studies of the old type were pretty well out of fashion. His companions were very generally imbued with the ideas of the philosophers. This relaxation of the older discipline continued down to the Revolution, and Talleyrand did not find residence there irksome. He stayed there two years, wrote the customary theses, and took a licentiate in theology on March 2nd, 1778. He never tried for the doctorate. But we may well believe that, as he says, he was “taken up with quite other things than theology.” The success of 1775 had stimulated him, and he spent many an hour in the darkened chapel before the tomb of Richelieu. He hints, too, that pleasure was his chief preoccupation, though this is limited by a later statement that he was unable to look up young Choiseul and find secular friends until he had left the Sorbonne. About the beginning of 1778 he completed his theological training and plunged in the gaieties of Parisian life.8

So much has been written on the social life of the wealthy and noble classes in France on the eve of the Revolution, that I need say little more than that the AbbÉ de PÉrigord, as he was now commonly styled, was found in every brilliant salon and circle at Paris during the next ten years. “You do not know what it is to live,” he would say indulgently to the new generation in their restored gaiety after 1815. In some few respects the pace of life had been moderated since the days of Louis XIV, but in others it had increased. There were no longer Pompadours and Du Barrys at Versailles, but the King’s propriety was less noticeable than his vulgarity9—courtiers telling daily of his prodigious breakfasts and dinners and indigestions, his antics when they were putting him to bed, and so on—and was quite undone by his weakness. The cynical memoirs of Lauzun show how little change there was in the character of the Court. The imprudence and frivolity of the beautiful young Queen, leaving Versailles to mix with the masked crowd at the Opera when the King had gone to bed (and being locked out by her tactless consort at six in the morning), or gambling heavily with her ladies until day-break, or giving far too substantial ground for charges of gallantry, encouraged the rising generation of nobles in their giddy dance in the crater of a rumbling volcano. She was largely responsible for the passion for heavy gambling that broke out. At Marly her ladies had to change their dresses after playing—soiled with the masses of gold wrung from an almost bankrupt country. A vulgar American adventurer could get the entrÉe of Versailles by letting it be known that he had a large sum of money to lose; he won in a short time 1,500,000 livres from his royal shearers. Another man won 1,800,000 livres in one evening. The thoughtless Count d’Artois, the King’s brother, bet the Queen 100,000 livres that he would build a palace in the Bois in six weeks; he won it—and the 900 men he had employed scattered over Paris with the story. Whoever could invent or import a new sensation was sure of the Queen’s support. Racing was introduced from England, and she flew to Sablons to lay bets on the horses of her favourite, the too notorious Lauzun. Then chariot races (some chariots costing ten thousand crowns) varied the programme; and a society was formed at Paris for the construction of a bull-ring. Grave parliamentary lawyers and financial ministers frowned, and were dismissed.

From an engraving.

TALLEYRAND
(A portrait taken in early life).