Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
brace of the birds as well as the eggs. At present I am desolate. My
heart is torn, M. Talleyrand! it is almost plucked out of my bosom. I
have no other care, no other thought, day or night, but the happiness
of my people. The allies, who have most shamefully overlooked the
destitution of my kitchen, seem resolved to turn a deaf ear to its
cries evermore; nay, even to render them shriller and shriller. The
allies, I suspect, are resolved to execute the design of the
mischievous Pitt.
_Talleyrand._ May it please your majesty to inform me _which_ of them;
for he formed a thousand, all mischievous, but greatly more
mischievous to England than to France. Resolved to seize the sword, in
his drunkenness, he seized it by the edge, and struck at us with the
hilt, until he broke it off and until he himself was exhausted by loss
of breath and of blood. We owe alike to him the energy of our armies,
the bloody scaffolds of public safety, the Reign of Terror, the empire
of usurpation, and finally, as the calm is successor to the tempest,
and sweet fruit to bitter kernel, the blessing of your majesty's
restoration. Excepting in this one event, he was mischievous to our
country; but in all events, and in all undertakings, he was pernicious
to his own. No man ever brought into the world such enduring evil; few
men such extensive.
_Louis._ His king ordered it. George III loved battles and blood.
_Talleyrand._ But he was prudent in his appetite for them.
_Louis._ He talked of peppering his people as I would talk of
peppering a capon.
_Talleyrand._ Having split it. His subjects cut up by his subjects
were only capers to his leg of mutton. From none of his palaces and
parks was there any view so rural, so composing to his spirits, as the
shambles. When these were not fresh, the gibbet would do.
I wish better luck to the pheasants' eggs than befell Mr. Pitt's
designs. Not one brought forth anything.
_Louis._ No: but he declared in the face of his Parliament, and of
Europe, that he would insist on indemnity for the past and security
for the future. These were his words. Now, all the money and other
wealth the French armies levied in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and
everywhere else, would scarcely be sufficient for this indemnity.
_Talleyrand._ England shall never receive from us a tithe of that
amount.
_Louis._ A tithe of it! She may demand a quarter or a third, and leave
us wondering at her moderation and forbearance.
_Talleyrand._ The matter must be arranged immediately, before she has
time for calculation or reflection. A new peace maddens England to the
same paroxysm as a new war maddens France. She hath sent over hither
her minister ... or rather her prime minister himself is come to
transact all the business ... the most ignorant and most shortsighted
man to be found in any station of any public office throughout the
whole of Europe. He must be treated as her arbiter: we must talk to
him of restoring her, of regenerating her, of preserving her, of
guiding her, which (we must protest with our hands within our frills)
he alone is capable of doing. We must enlarge on his generosity (and
generous he indeed is), and there is nothing he will not concede.
_Louis._ But if they do not come over in a week, we shall lose the
season. I ought to be eating a pheasant-poult by the middle of July.
Oh, but you were talking to me about the other matter, and perhaps the
weightier of the two; ay, certainly. If this indemnity is paid to
England, what becomes of our civil list, the dignity of my family and
household?
_Talleyrand._ I do assure your majesty, England shall never receive ...
did I say a tithe?... I say she shall never receive a fiftieth of what
she expended in the war against us. It would be out of all reason, and
out of all custom in her to expect it. Indeed it would place her in
almost as good a condition as ourselves. Even if she were beaten she
could hardly hope _that_: she never in the last three centuries has
demanded it when she was victorious. Of all the sufferers by the war,
we shall be the best off.
_Louis._ The English are calculators and traders.
_Talleyrand._ Wild speculators, gamblers in trade, who hazard more
ventures than their books can register. It will take England some
years to cast up the amount of her losses.
_Louis._ But she, in common with her allies, will insist on our ceding
those provinces which my predecessor Louis XIV annexed to his kingdom.
Be quite certain that nothing short of Alsace, Lorraine, and Franc
Comte, will satisfy the German princes. They must restore the German
language in those provinces: for languages are the only true
boundaries of nations, and there will always be dissension where there
is difference of tongue. We must likewise be prepared to surrender the
remainder of the Netherlands; not indeed to England, who refused them
in the reign of Elizabeth: she wants only Dunkirk, and Dunkirk she
will have.
_Talleyrand._ This seems reasonable: for which reason it must never
be. Diplomacy, when she yields to such simple arguments as plain
reason urges against her, loses her office, her efficacy, and her
name.
_Louis._ I would not surrender our conquests in Germany, if I could
help it.
_Talleyrand._ Nothing more easy. The Emperor Alexander may be
persuaded that Germany united and entire, as she would then become,
must be a dangerous rival to Russia.
_Louis._ It appears to me that Poland will be more so, with her free
institutions.
_Talleyrand._ There is only one statesman in the whole number of those
assembled at Paris, who believes that her institutions will continue
free; and he would rather they did not; but he stipulates for it, to
gratify and mystify the people of England.
_Louis._ I see this clearly. I have a great mind to send Blacas over
to Stowe. I can trust to him to look to the crates and coops, and to
see that the pheasants have enough of air and water, and that the
Governor of Calais finds a commodious place for them to roost in,
forbidding the drums to beat and disturb them, evening or morning. The
next night, according to my calculation, they repose at Montreuil. I
must look at them before they are let loose. I cannot well imagine why
the public men employed by England are usually, indeed constantly so
inferior in abilities to those of France, Prussia, Austria, and
Russia. What say you, M. Talleyrand? I do not mean about the
pheasants; I mean about the envoys.
_Talleyrand._ It can only be that I have considered the subject more
frequently and attentively than suited the avocations of your majesty,
that the reason comes out before me clearly and distinctly. The prime
ministers, in all these countries, are independent, and uncontrolled
in the choice of agents. A prime minister in France may perhaps be
willing to promote the interests of his own family; and hence he may
appoint from it one unworthy of the place. In regard to other
families, he cares little or nothing about them, knowing that his
power lies in the palace, and not in the club-room. Whereas in England
he must conciliate the great families, the hereditary dependants of
his faction, Whig or Tory. Hence even the highest commands have been
conferred on such ignorant and worthless men as the Duke of York and
the Earl of Chatham, although the minister was fully aware that the
honour of his nation was tarnished, and that its safety was in
jeopardy, by such appointments. Meanwhile he kept his seat however,
and fed from it his tame creatures in the cub.
_Louis._ Do you apprehend any danger (talking of cubs) that my
pheasants will be bruised against the wooden bars, or suffer by
sea-sickness? I would not command my bishops to offer up public
prayers against such contingencies: for people must never have
positive evidence that the prayers of the Church can possibly be
ineffectual: and we cannot pray for pheasants as we pray for fine
weather, by the barometer. We must drop it. Now go on with the others,
if you have done with England.
_Talleyrand._ A succession of intelligent men rules Prussia, Russia,
and Austria; because these three are economical, and must get their
bread by creeping, day after day, through the hedges next to them, and
by filching a sheaf or two, early and late, from cottager or small
farmer; that is to say, from free states and petty princes. Prussia,
like a mongrel, would fly at the legs of Austria and Russia, catching
them with the sack upon their shoulders, unless they untied it and
tossed a morsel to her. These great powers take especial care to
impose a protective duty on intellect; to let none enter the country,
and none leave it, without a passport. Their diplomatists are as
clever and conciliatory as those of England are ignorant and
repulsive, who, while they offer an uncounted sum of secret-service
money with the left hand, give a sounding slap on the face with the
right.
_Louis._ We, by adopting a contrary policy, gain more information,
raise more respect, inspire more awe, and exercise more authority. The
weightiest of our disbursements are smiles and flatteries, with a
ribbon and a cross at the end of them.
But, between the Duke of York and the Earl of Chatham, I must confess,
I find very little difference.
_Talleyrand._ Some, however. The one was only drunk all the evening
and all the night; the other was only asleep all the day. The
accumulated fogs of Walcheren seemed to concentrate in his brain,
puffing out at intervals just sufficient to affect with typhus and
blindness four thousand soldiers. A cake of powder rusted their
musket-pans, which they were too weak to open and wipe. Turning round
upon their scanty and mouldy straw, they beheld their bayonets piled
together against the green dripping wall of the chamber, which neither
bayonet nor soldier was ever to leave again.
_Louis._ We suffer by the presence of the allied armies in our
capital: but we shall soon be avenged: for the English minister in
another fortnight will return and remain at home.
_Talleyrand._ England was once so infatuated as to give up Malta to
us, although fifty Gibraltars would be of inferior value to her.
Napoleon laughed at her: she was angry: she began to suspect she had
been duped and befooled: and she broke her faith.
_Louis._ For the first time, M. Talleyrand, and with a man who never
had any.
_Talleyrand._ We shall now induce her to evacuate Sicily, in violation
of her promises to the people of that island. Faith, having lost her
virginity, braves public opinion, and never blushes more.
_Louis._ Sicily is the key to India, Egypt is the lock.
_Talleyrand._ What, if I induce the minister to restore to us
Pondicherry?
_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! you have done great things, and without
boasting. Whenever you do boast, let it be that you will perform only
the thing which is possible. The English know well enough what it is
to allow us a near standing-place anywhere. If they permit a Frenchman
to plant one foot in India, it will upset all Asia before the other
touches the ground. It behoves them to prohibit a single one of us
from ever landing on those shores. Improbable as it is that a man
uniting to the same degree as Hyder-Ali did political and military
genius, will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the
princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous.
While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her
perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the
dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the
East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in
maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so wealthy and so wise
should be supported on the bosom of royalty. Believe me, her merchants
will take alarm, and arouse the nation.