TALLEYRAND

The life-story of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, as I propose to write it, begins when, in his third or fourth year, he falls off a chest of drawers and permanently injures his foot. That wrench of muscles and tendons, making him limp for life, led to a perverse action on the part of his educators that did equal violence to an excellent natural disposition. They say now that the education of a child begins a hundred years before he is born. In the case of Talleyrand you may just as well say a thousand. On his father’s side he came of one of the oldest noble families in France, and his mother was a daughter of the Marquis d’Antigny. But these hereditary influences only shape the general contour of his character - give the refinement, the instinct to rise (Talleyrand, or Tailleran - as Napoleon always pronounced it - is said to be from “tailler les rangs”), the “sensibility” and “spirituality” (as people spoke then), the self-possession. When you wish to trace the growth of the peculiar traits of Prince Talleyrand, you find the beginning in that fateful fall and dislocation of the foot.